My wife has gotten several of these iphones over the years, and has always been
able to make calls walking out of the store with them. I dont know if it would
be any different if you have one arriving in the mail, but i would think not. I
recently gave one of her old iphones a hard reset and used it while mine was in
the shop. Everything worked fine after popping in the sim card. I know you do
have to have an itunes *account* to download any apps from their store. If I
recall corectly, i was able to set that up directly on the phone. I am fairly
certain I had the device fully functional without ever going near itunes. The
only thing that left me puzzled using ubuntu to manage content was in making
playlists. But i guess if you have been using an ipod already, you probably
have that figured out. hth...