I’m excited about this release because I’ve become a fan of the iPhone after some initial skepticism, centered around the physical interface (I do still miss the keyboard of my Blackberry 8703e). Over time I’ve come to appreciate the iPhone’s integration, polish and utility. Maybe too much, if you ask my wife.

With WordPress 2, the development team has created a high quality blogging app, one that I think many iPhone users will enjoy putting through its paces.

If you blog with WordPress I think you’ll appreciate the ease of connecting your existing WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress blog, the streamlined post and comments interfaces, and persistence and restoration features to preserve your work should you switch apps or lose your network connection.

On the reading side, we turned on mobile themes for smartphones and feature phones by default for WordPress.com blogs a couple of weeks ago, improving the accessibility of blog content for mobile readers. (Self-hosted WordPress bloggers can add the WPTouch plugin to offer a mobile device optimized layout to their readers.)

Three more cool things to try:

1. Configure Publicize for your blog to push your posts to Twitter and Yahoo! automatically
2. Post by Email is an alternative method for posting from your iPhone (or any other email-capable mobile device) – details here.
3. WordPress for Blackberry is also available (as with WordPress for iPhone, a joint my colleague Raanan worked on).

Future releases of WordPress for iPhone are already in the works. Like much of what we do, this is an open source project and the team welcomes feature requests, feedback, and bug reports.

Here’s a roundup of reviews and blogger reactions:

WordPress’ sophomore iPhone debut impresses
- Josh Lowensohn, CNET

WordPress for iPhone 2: Mobile Blogging Just Got Easier
- Frederic Lardinois, ReadWriteWeb

iPhone apps that bloggers will love
- Dave Caolo, The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Top 10 Must Have iPhone Apps for Bloggers
- WPBeginner.com

iPhone Apps That Bloggers Need
- Brian X. Chen, Wired

WordPress for iPhone OS 2.0: a Review
- Wayne Dixon, Macgasm

WordPress 2 for iPhone/iPod Touch
- Stephen Ingraham, Cloudy Days and Netbook Nights