The new iPhone 3.0 firmware is out, and it’s free for iPhone users ($10 if you use an iPod Touch). With some 40 million people hitting the Apple servers nearly all at once, getting it may take awhile.

I made the mistake of putting off an iTunes update last week, and it was required for this iPhone update. That delayed me an hour. Then I had to actually download the iPhone update, back up the phone and then have the install validated by an Apple server. That last part proved to be the weakest link in the chain – it took about 20 tries for the first phone, and 50 for the second. The install itself took maybe 15-20 minutes (per phone).

When my iPhone finally came back to life, there was a new app, Voice Memos, installed at the bottom right of the first page of app followed by a new 10th page – so now you can have 164 apps instead of 148. The extra page is blank except for the front page icon that was bumped by the new “official” app (read: cannot be removed), but the good news is that moving icons is now a lot easier. Your pages of icons do not reshuffle until you release the app you are moving. Too bad cut and paste doesn’t work for icons, but this is still a huge improvement.

I also ran into problems updating apps from the App Store on my phone, thanks in part to a new terms of service agreement that kept timing out. Unless you really need a particular app or app update right away, you might wait until things settle down – probably later this evening.

In the meantime, if you’re looking to find out what’s new beyond the widely reported big features, read How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0.