Last week I offered to review the new iPhone for the Commonweal blogsite, if Commonweal would buy the phone for me. I took Pauls and Grants silence in response to my offer to be an acceptance. So move over Pogue and Mossberg, here is my review.

Let me say at the start that the long lines everyone predicted did not materialize, at least not in Cleveland, and at least not if you had the good sense to go after dinner on Friday night instead of at 6:00 p.m. sharp. I strolled right up to the counter, bought the phone, and was out the door in less than ten minutes.

The phone was a breeze to set up. You have to activate the phone through iTunes, and the longest part of the process was updating my iTunes, which I should have done in advance. Even with this delay, the phone was up and running within 15 minutes.

For the most part, I would say that the phone lives up to its hype: It is gorgeous, remarkably easy to use, and just plain fun. Almost every function is intuitive and can be easily mastered without reading a thick manual. My Gmail account was a breeze to set up and it works much better on the iPhone than it did on my Treo 650.

There are a couple of wrong notes here, but not many. You cannot add or delete buttons on the opening screen, nor can you move them around. Thus, for example, there is a permanent button for checking stocks on the opening screenwhich I will never usebut not one for contactswhich I use all time. You cannot take a screenshot picture, which is too bad, because I can imagine lots of situations when that would be useful. You cannot use your iTunes songs to make ringtones. You cannot set a home page for your Internet browser. Nevertheless, despite a few minor problems, this is a terrific phone/ipod/organizer.

(Paul and Grant, receipts are in the mail. Just kidding.)