What a night.

As most of you have probably heard, Apple’s latest gadget, the iPhone 3G, went on sale at midnight on July 11th. Because New Zealand is GMT+12, July 11 hits here first, thus we’re the first country in the world to get the iPhone 3G.
I planned to upgrade from my current first generation iPhone to the new iPhone 3G and wanted to go to the midnight launch at the Queen Street Vodafone store.

We ended up arriving there at about 8:50 p.m. and were #44 in the queue. I took a few photos and started waiting in line. My friend Kapow was in line waiting with me, even though he wasn’t purchasing one for himself. I wasn’t really surprised by the turn out due to the shocking plans on Vodafone’s part, although I thought there would have been more by the time we had arrived.

The atmosphere was awesome. There was quite a lot of free stuff handed out which was great. I got three different Vodafone hats, a Vodafone blanket, quite a few drinks, a sweet iFixIt.com lazer/light/magnet (which is NOT a pen, as I [and another person we were chatting to a few spaces up] found out the hard way!), an apple and two McDonald’s Apple Pies. Geddit? Apple pies? Apple iPhone? Hahahaha… ha. Vodafone was also filling out forms and running credit checks while people waited in line to save time in store which was quite smart.

About 30 minutes after we arrived, a man came up to us and we started talking about the iPhone and the cost of it for a little bit before he left. We thought that he was a passer by that had stopped to ask, as we had a few during the night. I saw him a few more times around the place, I didn’t suspect anything. It wasn’t until 11:50 that he started walking towards me and handed me his cellphone. I couldn’t really hear what was being said, it was something along the likes of “come up.” I followed him to the front of the queue where I met his brother, #2 in line. I asked what was happening and he said “I’m giving you an iPhone.” Whoah. I couldn’t believe it! I don’t know how to describe the next few moments. Shortly after Jonny Gladwell purchased the first iPhone, Evert Bruyns walked out with his two, went over to the George FM booth and handed one of them to me. I really didn’t know how to respond, for all of the media interviews I was rather speechless. We were interviewed by 3 News, TVNZ, Prime News, CNET Australia and a few others I didn’t catch the name of.

In all, it was an interesting night. I’d really like to thank Evert & Eben Bruyns and Annie Ryan over at Wishcollector for giving me such an awesome gift and I wish them the best of luck with their website. I’m still waiting to have my Vodafone service setup, but I’m going to sort that out tomorrow.

All my photos from the launch and my iPhone 3G unboxing are on Flickr here.