Just over a week ago, the day I went to Wimbledon actually, the world saw the new iphone4 released. It created mass hysteria and some people had even lined up at the apple store at Regent Street days in advance, camping overnight, of the release.

I’ve never been an apple supporter mainly because I guess I don’t really like to be a follower in terms of trends. However, there’s no doubt that apple products are innovative, smart and a steps ahead of many of its competitors in the market. 2010 is the year that the pull on the iphone4 proved too much for me to resist.

So how to get one?

Next to buying the phone outright from an apple store, o2 pretty much had the exclusive market on the iphone4 availability. They are making it available to o2 customers only for the first month. Hence last week on the morning of the 24th June I rather impulsively found myself in line at my local o2 store at 6.40am in the morning waiting for the 8am opening. I’d actually woken at 5 that morning and just lay in bed waiting thinking that no one would be in line at that time. What a fool I was – when I got to o2 there were at least 30 people in front of me already!

Where I was in the line I was actually guaranteed a phone but unfortunately o2 took forever to process everyone (I think they kept trying to up-sell and, worst of all, people were going in with no idea of what tariff they wanted to go on, which phone they wanted etc.!) The first 4-5 people took over 1.5 hours to process … and considering there were 4-5 serves in the store that was ridiculous.

Four hours later, at 10.30, I had to leave the line to meet my brother to get to Wimbledon. Hilariously everyone around me, even those in line behind me, was like, “No, don’t go”, “You’ve waited so long” etc. It was really nice of everyone – I love the way we all bonded in the queue! Actually, o2 were rather good at keeping us, if not entertained, occupied with free tea/coffee/water from Pret, draws for free tickets to concerts, constant updates on stock etc.

Sadly at the end of that day at least it didn’t result in me getting an iphone 🙁

But there was good-sh news.

o2 were apparently getting stock every day. They’d set up an online live stock system which let you know which stores had stock for the day. To say that I was on it every day every hour would be an understatement. Even though I could have probably waited for the phone after lining up for 4 hours I had a taste for it and I wanted it NOW! Ha ha!

Luckily I had a lot of good o2 stores around me, in particular the store at Westfield which proved to be a minefield for stock. The next day, the Friday, I saw there was stock so, with my manager’s permission I had an early lunch, and headed over. Clearly I wasn’t the only one monitoring the o2 website as when I got there, only 20 or so minutes after the o2 store opened, there was already a long snaking line inside! There were an additional 25 or 30 of us outside (in front of me!) Entertainingly “the bouncer” wouldn’t let us who were outside form a queue – he wanted us to mill around and pretend we weren’t in the queue. So strange!

After about half an hour or 45 minutes a rep came out to tell us that they had run out of 32GB iphones so I cut my losses and left the line .

What followed was a week of checking the o2 website and anxiousness when I was away from the internet. Ha ha! Finally my persistence was awarded and stock came in again today at Westfield. When I got to Westfield it was nearly noon and I was probably about 60th in the line? I guess I should be happy that I was even that, about ten minutes later and another 50 people had joined the line behind me! Thankfully o2 had stepped up their speed of processing and after just under 2.5 hours, and my pocket a whole lot lighter!, I had my hot little iphone4 in my hands.

Ironically I’m not going to get the phone out until I can find an appropriate case for it … heh heh.

14 July 2010 Update

Here is it! My baby!