However, in landscape mode, the keyboard covers more of the message you're typing, so you see fewer lines of text—two or three lines, compared to the five or so when its in portrait mode. There also seems to be a glitch with the keyboard. When I tilted the phone into the vertical position to summon the portrait-sized keyboard, the keyboard became distorted, like two half-keyboards stacked one on top of another. Restarting the Touch seemed to fix the problem—for now.

Cut-and-paste works fine, save for attachments. When replying to an e-mail, I found the cut-and paste-feature works well. Double tapping on text produces the copy button and highlights the word you tapped. You can easily expand the swath of text you wish to copy by dragging your finger along the touch screen, and lifting it when you're done. Double tap in a new region, and the "select, copy, paste" menu appears. Peck "paste" to drop in the copied text. Cool feature: If you make a mistake any time during this process, just shake your iPhone or Touch to undo. You can also copy text from one document and paste it in another, even on a different application. For example, I was able to paste the name of a camera I found in a Google search into the search field of my Amazon.com app.

But the paste function does not work with e-mail attachments, at least without an additional application. When I opened an attachment, a Word document, the only editing option that appeared was to "copy."

Fast downloads. I was able to download a full-length digital movie (Don't Mess with the Zohan, running time: Almost 2 hours) in just 33 minutes.

The software upgrade, which became available at 1 p.m. (EST) today, is free to all current iPhone owners and costs $10 for all iPod Touch users. While I didn't have any problems with the upgrade, The New York Times reports some of the snags—including the loss of some iPhone features—that other up-graders experienced.

I'm impressed so far with all the new features of the software upgrade. And I can't wait to see what's in store on Friday, June 19, when Apple releases the iPhone 3G S, which upgrades some of the phone's internal hardware. Claimed improvements include faster system performance, a higher-quality camera that will be able to digitally capture full-motion video, and voice-command capabilities. (Just speak to the new iPhone and it will obey, is the promise.)

Like ordinary consumers, our secret shoppers will be waiting on line at various retailers to buy our own units on Friday. We'll be putting our new iPhones through their paces and report here on this blog—and on our Twitter page!—as soon as we know more.

Stay tuned! —Mike Gikas.