First iPhone 5 reviews are in - good grades all around

It's still a couple of days early before the iPhone 5 arrives at the doorsteps of those over 2 million people that have pre-ordered it.

But we're already seeing the first wave of reviews by the lucky few that have gotten their hands on Apple's latest smartphone and have given it a test run over the past couple of days.

Those include Engadget, CNET, John Gruber of The Daring Fireball, long-time Apple-centric columnist from TechCrunch MG Siegler and others. The prevailing opinion of most of these reviewers is that the iPhone 5 is a notable upgrade from the 4S.

The screen received much praise and several reviewers mention the in-cell touch tech that Apple has employed in as a great improvement, bringing the pixels closer to the surface.

Many hail the "new" Panorama feature as intuitive and very well functioning. Observations on the new custom-designed Apple A6 chip are very positive too. There aren't all that many synthetic benchmarks yet but several reviewers have done a side-by-side comparison with the iPhone 4S and the "2x-as-fast" performance claim is seemingly true.

The only part of the iPhone 5 that has received more critiques than praise is the iOS 6, which has been called slightly dated on multiple occasions.

Although impressed, we won't take any of this at face value until we've seen it for ourselves. We're more than eager to put the iPhone 5 through our usual reviewing procedures and we'll be doing so as soon as possible, so stay tuned!