Apple is having a very good day. First came the official release of the iPhone “iPlans” from AT&T which at the low end are a very manageable $60-a-month. Now we have the first iPhone reviews coming in and the consensus seems to be that just as Apple would have you believe, it’s a remarkable device that just about lives up to its unbelievable hype.

Here are some of the big ones to check out:

Walt Mossberg’s for The Wall Street Journal
David Pogue’s for The New York Times
Steven Levy’s for Newsweek

All agree that if it doesn’t quite live up to the hype, it comes pretty darn close, which is saying a lot. Over and over we hear that the device looks awesome, the battery life is great, it’s one of the most innovative devices ever. The touchscreen keyboard is a worrisome area at first for everyone, but after a few days getting used to it, Mossberg declares it just as solid as using a regular keypad on any other smart phone – this is a sigh of relief for me.

The major downsides of the device seem pretty unanimous as well: that damned EDGE network. Why oh why if Apple wanted to tout this as the “full” Internet in your pocket, didn’t they just hook it up to the 3G network? Yes, WiFi is great, but if you’re only going to use that, why not just buy a PDA?

Other downsides: no instant messaging (though you’d think Apple could easily fix this with an iChat for iPhone client), only standard text messaging (no pictures and/or video attachments), no video capture for the camera, and the Safari for the iPhone doesn’t support Flash (which doesn’t matter for YouTube videos now as obviously there is an entirely separate YouTube channel for videos – re-encoded with h.264).

Oh good lord, I may just find myself in line on Friday. Luckily I have a few days to calm down and hopefully think rationally…