There more than enough reviews and opinions on the coolest gadget in the telephony space so what is point o adding another one ?  I was originally quite anti-iPhone anti-Rogers for - IMHO - pretty strong reasons, so it is interesting to review them and see how they survived the reality check.

That maybe not be the strongest reason ... but am going to do that anyway.

Activation

I have ordered the phone by calling the 1-888-ROGERS1 and as I mentioned, the shopping experience was for a change a great one ... That was Tuesday morning and to my big surprise, the phone was delivered n Thursday afternoon.

I surpressed the urge return to Ottawa (I was in Montreal until end of week) and could get to the setup only on Friday evening. It was good to find that I have received what I ordered - white 16 GB version ...

The Apple portion of the activation was excellent user experience. I plugged the phone to my Macbook Pro and that was it. It recognized it, offered option to restore last backup from my iPod Touch, which loaded not only all podcasts and music, but also all applications. Very nice. 9 out of 10 (would be 10, if the whole process was a bit faster)

The phone setup (read Rogers) part was pretty lame, though. I had to call the Rogers again, and - unlike when I wanted to spend money with them - I was less than happy. First, wait time everywhere until you get somebody on the line. I do not quite understand what is the point of annoying voice guidance computer system, when you mostly end up by wrong person anyway.

First CR was neither friendly nor competent, after collecting all my data redirected me to different department. Another long wait. The second person was also unable to solve it, but at least she was genuinely trying to be helpful and started to get some technical rep on line. It took another 20 minutes (two rounds Spider Solitair in Windows VM). After the tech rep became available, I had to take out my SIM, read the serial number and my service was switched in less than 5 minutes. Globally, Rogers 3 out of 10 - just because the tech rep was actually pretty good.

To be continued