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iPhone 4 Release Day

Today, June 24th 2010, was the release date of the iPhone 4, and I was determined to make the most of the fortunate opportunity that I had to get to the Regent Street Apple Store super-early and lay my hands on one. Arriving at 06:45, I was already a long way back in the queue, I'd guess with around 200 people ahead of me. I passed the time by reading a copy of Huck magazine that I'd brought with me (great mag, read it cover-to-cover!) and eating free chocolate croissants provided by Pret a manger. I was also accosted by some dim-witted market research girls who asked me questions such as:

"Do you own any of the following: jeans, white trainers, black turtlenecks or old-fashioned glasses?"

Apparently it's important for them to know whether I like to play Steve Jobs dress-up now and again. Morons, what an enormous waste of money!

In the end it took me 3 hours to get inside and then a further hour to do the purchase and activation, largely because the two Apple employees that were serving me were quite poorly trained and not the typical Apple uber-geeks that I have come to expect. They were pleasant enough but a bit slow and made loads of mistakes throughout! They will get better though, it's just launch-day teething.

It was finally activated at about 10.30ish and I've spent much of the rest of the day using it. Briefly, my impressions are that it is fast, that multitasking works very efficiently and that both the screen and camera are gorgeous. On the downside, I have to admit that the flat back looks like a cheap Shenzhen knock-off. To be honest, none of the recent models has had as classy an appearance as the original aluminium-backed 2G. I will be adding a few photos to this entry that document my efforts to be among the first to acquire one of these bad-boys.