Waiting for iPhone, and waiting, and waiting …

I ordered my new Apple iPhone 4 exactly one week ago and I'm still patiently awaiting its arrival. The trouble is, the phone itself, which I ordered on the AT&T site, hasn't even shipped yet. The cyberpath for my order number on the tracking page shows the order is still “processing.” I wonder if that means “it is still being built.” Maybe the processing department had an extralong holiday week.

Moments after ordering my phone I headed to the online Apple Store and ordered a "bumper" case. On the eighth day (today) I received notice that the order is in transit, having been shipped from the factory in Shenzhen, China to a FedEx center in Lantau Island, Hong Kong. Estimated delivery date is one week from today, July 13.

I guess waiting online has some advantages to waiting in line (it’s a lot cooler temperaturewise). But a wait is a wait is a wait.

I promise not to harp on this, and will wait at least another week before sharing a status update with you. In the meantime, my iPhone 3G keeps chugging along. I imagine my patience would be a bit thinner if I really had to have this new iPhone 4 immediately. I just hope it gets here before the iPhone 5 model starts shipping.

On a related note, I heard today from a friend who got his iPhone 4 on June 25. He has already returned the unit to a local Apple Store due to terrible phone reception and was given a new one. He said the calls were very crackly and almost impossible to understand. He said the second unit is performing better, but he still loathes the ever-weaker AT&T 3G network.

"It's the world's greatest computing device. Period," he said. "And the world's worst phone."

After sharing our how-bad-the-ATT&T-network-has-gotten tales, he agreed the likely culprit is the network, not the iPhone 4.