After lining up for hours, or sometimes days, Apple-philes on Thursday morning were set to get their hands the iPhone 4, the latest in the company’s line of trend-setting smartphones.

The phone was scheduled to go on sale in U.S. stores at 7 a.m. Thursday, as well as at 8 a.m. local time in France, Germany, Japan and the UK.

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the new phone this month, he said the iPhone 4 is “the biggest leap we’ve taken since the original iPhone,” which debuted in 2007.

The phone will cost $199 for a 16-gigabyte version and $299 for a version with 32 gigabytes of storage space for photos, videos, movies and apps.

The iPhone 4 has a higher-resolution screen, which Apple calls a “retina display” and says is better than anything in the industry.

It is about 25 percent thinner than the most recent generation of iPhones and features cameras on the front and back, which will allow video conferencing.

The phone comes in two colors: black and white.

Early reviews of the phone have been predominantly positive.

Some have criticized Apple’s continuing policy of not running Flash graphics, websites and games on its products, as well as the company’s deal to sell the iPhone only with an AT&T wireless network contract.

The size of the iPhone’s screen — at 3.5 inches, measured diagonally — has also come under criticism. Several Android-based smartphones sport larger screens, which some analysts say are better for watching video.

The Droid X and the HTC EVO 4G, for example, both have a 4.3-inch screens.

Apple’s popular phone also faces competition from Android-based smartphones like the Droid X, which Verizon debuted this week. Those phones run on a different operating system and therefore use different apps and games.

BlackBerry phones from the company Research In Motion remain the most popular smartphones on the market, although some analysts classify those phones separately because they run different apps and often don’t have touch-sensitive screens. iPhones and Android phones are thought to be more popular with general consumers, while the BlackBerry has more business clients.

Aside from the potential mob scenes at Apple stores, three other retailers — Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Radio Shack — will have the iPhone 4 on Thursday.

The phones also were available for pre-order on the internet.

Some customers reported receiving the phones Wednesday, an apparent hat-tip from Apple to its most loyal customers. The company sold 600,000 iPhone 4s in pre-order, and one analyst expected the company to sell as many as 9.5 million phones by the end of June. That would break previous records set by the company. Apple sold 1 million of the first iPhone in about 2½ months.

Apple said the pre-order response for the iPhone 4 has been overwhelming, roughly 10 times bigger than the response when the 3GS went on sale. That led to some problems with orders and phone availability.

(Source: CNN)