As you probably know by now, several people have reported to have already received their new iPhone 4 from Apple.

While the general reaction from these users has been extremely positive, we have also been waiting for the official reviews from some of our favorite tech journalists like Walt Mossberg of Wall Street Journal, David Pogue of New York Times.

Now, with only a day to go for the official June 24 launch day, Apple has lifted the embargo on official reviews and we've started seeing some of the well known tech critics publishing reviews of Apple's new iPhone 4. 

Here is an overview of the reviews posted by some reviewers:

Hardware:

"Physically, the iPhone 4 is attractive and feels great in the hand. Even the back is now clad in glass, which Apple claims is a superstrong variety 30 times tougher than plastic. I dropped it several times from a few feet onto a hard surface with no problem, and it acquired no scratches at all in my testing, even though I didn’t use a case or coddle it."

Walt Mossberg on All Things Digital (WSJ)

"Despite a beefier battery (16 percent more likely to last a full day), a faster processor and upgraded everything, the new model is still noticeably thinner and narrower than before. How is that possible? In part, the trick was squaring off the back. It’s no longer gracefully curved — a design that, if you think about it, created wasted space around the rectangular components. The new iPhone is two glass slabs, front and back, wrapped by a stainless-steel band.

The new phone uses the same custom chip that’s in the iPad; it’s really, really fast. It makes a difference every time you tap the touch screen."

David Pogue on New York Times

"We can't overstate how high-end the design of the iPhone 4 is. The 3GS now feels cheap and chubby by comparison, and even a phone like the HTC Droid Incredible — which just came out — seems last-generation."

Joshua Topolsky on Engadget

Camera:

"Another strong point of the new version of iPhone's camera is the ability to make better sense of high, low, and medium light within one shot. When you touch on an area of the camera's view to focus, the iPhone automatically senses factors such as exposure, and auto-adjusts for you based on the selected focal point.

There was a tendency on iPhone 3GS and earlier to get overly dark, or overly blown-out shots when an image incorporates bright whites and dark darks. iPhone 4 is smarter in this regard."

Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing

Video Capabilities:

"The higher definition video [720p] is spectacular, and far better in quality than what was possible with iPhone 3GS (or, as far as I've seen, with any smartphone). You have to be mindful of that camera orientation switch option noted above with FaceTime: when you shoot video out of one side of the device, you get lower-resolution 640 x 480 footage, and when you shoot out of the other side, you get far higher-res 1280 x 720."

Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing

Multitasking:

"But some logical candidates, such as Twitter and Facebook, merely pause in place when you switch away from them. You can get back to them quickly, and they update more rapidly than before, but they don’t constantly update in the background. They only wake up in the background if you have set them to notify you of an update, and then only for a limited time."

Walt Mossberg on All Things Digital

FaceTime:

"You can seamlessly switch from front to rear camera and back during a call, allowing you to share your surroundings with a caller. FaceTime works in portrait and landscape mode; landscape is useful if you want to get more than one person in a scene. Either way, you'll see your own mug in a small picture-in-picture window."

Edward C. Baig on USA Today

Other Features:

"There's clearly a difference between the sound in the earpiece on the new phone versus the 3GS, and it ranks highly against newer competition like the EVO. As far as the speakerphone goes, it gets loud without distorting or producing cutting midrange, a problem we've noticed on quite a few recent phones. We'd liken the iPhone 4 in quality to something along the lines of the BlackBerry Bold — a bearable tone even when it gets hot."

Joshua Topolsky on Engadget

"It(Tethering) worked flawlessly over Bluetooth, using AT&T's 3G, when the cable modem and wireless network in my office happened to be down for a while. What more do you want? It worked when I wanted it to work."

Xeni Jardin on BoingBoing

Downsides:

"Just as with its predecessors, I can’t recommend this new iPhone for voice calling for people who experience poor AT&T reception, unless they are willing to carry a second phone on a network that works better for them."

Walt Mossberg on All Things Digital

Have you received your iPhone 4 as yet? We would love to hear your first impressions. so please oblige us with your review comments.

[via NY Times, AllThingsD, Engadget, USAToday, BoingBoing]