Finally! (Sorry, I should have probably posted this positive story as quickly as I posted the previous negative one)

I popped back to my local Apple Store on Saturday morning; they mailed me on Friday evening to say they'd be open early on Saturday. True to their word they were open and able to acutally sell the iPhone this time. In fact I was in and out in around 25 minutes. For all the queues they'd seen the day before (they said most of their product launches went much better) I only heard one customer with raised voice; Apple appear to have escaped finger pointing on this occasion as clearly they weren't entirely at fault, and for once the Great British Public have realised that shouting at the person behind (or in the case of the Apple Store next to) the counter, isn't always necessary.

Truth be told they were a little bit late opening early, but they did have the courtesy to say hello when we met in the Starbucks queue and promised to be open just as soon as....

Anyway I'm now the proud owner of a 16GB 3G iPhone in (wait for it)...white; I figured the white would be less likely to show up the finger prints, would look better with the accessories (white power cord, white ear buds etc) and besides, everyone was telling/expecting me to go for black. I couldn't do that cause Free is the New Black and what would that make Black?

So what do I think?

Coming from a Nokia E61 on a PAYG Vodafone SIM the most obvious point of moving is to have a phone with mobile internet (to sum up 3G/Edge/AwayFromHome WIFI) without the pain of paying through the nose for data.. For example in the last 5 days of using the E61, I used up around £10 of PAYG credit on 10-20 texts and using the 3G connection as and when I fancied (that invovled four 15 minute train journeys and a 4 hour wait at the Apple Store). On the 02 contract I've got 500 pre-paid texts 600 voice minutes and all the data I can eat without making myself sick for £35.

The sign of a good contract is when your girlfriend (1) doesn't say "Eeek, how much? Well it's your money, you can do what you like with it." (2) does say (to her brother) "I might fancy one of those iPhones myself, it's only a little more than what I'm paying at the moment."

The integration with the Mac is seemingly seemless. My Google Mail and Sun email accounts appeared on the iPhone up on first Sync, my iCal calendar likewise (iSync worked well with the Nokia but iTunes and iCal are even better).

Probably the most under mentioned USP is that the software on the phone is maintained and developed. On my E61 I had to jump through hoops to get a firmware update onto the phone (and even then the chances of bricking the thing were significant -- had I not had an unlocked phone in the first place I probably wouldn't have risked it). With iPhone Apple (and now Developers) are providing real software updates and addressing RFEs in a way the mainstream mobile market hasn't really seen before. That made the purchase worthwhile aside from any other benefits.

Downside?

Still making my mind up about the battery-life. Using it as a phone with Edge access will probably be the way to ensure good battery life. I don't need or want to use it a my primary email client or browser (but it's nice to have that option wherever you find yourself wanting to browse, email or IM).

A car charger will probably be essential when TomTom or TeleNav get their GPS software on board (the much mentioned License restriction to the use of Google Maps by third party Apps doesn't prevent these two vendors delivering as they obviously have their own map data. However I tried the Google Maps GPS pinpointing from in the car and it was very good; clearly there is no underlying issue with the antenna size (which had also been much mentioned).

So if you hear the sound of a light sabre in or around a Sun office or behind you in the queue at the train station that might just be me (or one of the million others)!

So I decided to upgrade my Nokia E61 and in the process get away from PAYG and return to a contract. As I don't have a company mobile, the new iPhone 3G tariffs from O2 in the UK look reasonable (especially for the included 'unlimited' 3G and BT Cloud wifi).

As with most things Apple, being an early adopter has some pros (as with any new technology, the sooner you have it, the longer before it's superceded -- that's a boy's-toy's argument but I'm sticking with it.

To mis-quote Squeeze: This morning at 6:50, I took me rather nifty and 60 minutes later I was 13th inline at the Southampton Apple Store (this isn't something I'm particularly proud, however for a bunch of good reasons, it was better to bite the bullet and get to the Apple Store early than face one of the phone stores later in the day).

Despite the fact that Apple Stores were refusing to confirm they were opening early, by the noise coming from inside the store and the black curtain hung up at the front wind, they clearly were opening at 8:02 just as the O2 store was 10doors up.

At 8:02 we all went in (the AS staff clapped and cheered as they will) and we waited. The first 10 or 11 were taken to iMacs to have their details put into the O2 computer (a gateway website running in IE under Parralls).

At around 8:40 a cheer went up when the first customer's credit check (we thought) was finally completed, but by 9:00 still no-one had left with a phone.

There was a very nice man from O2 (in jeans and blazer, no polyester shirts and tie for him). He was keen to let us know the problem was with the connection to Experian for the credit checks and there was also a problem with another connection to another O2 system which kept going offline.

At about 10:00 they started agreeing to let people leave with a reservations. At 11:05 they let us at the head of the queue know that O2 were going to powercycle (I doubt it) their servers. I suspect they were probably just going to restart whatever app was running on the servers, knowing the type of servers O2 run their business on(!) power-cycling would take quite a while and achieve little more than would a good old "init 6".

The poor AS staff no idea how long it was going to take for that to complete, so they wouldn't know when they would be able to eventually start taking people through the credit check again.

Meanwhile down at the O2 store (and no doubt at all O2 and CPW stores) they were able to get passed this problem because they could fallback to a pen-and-paper system. Because Apple were effectively operating as O2 resellers for the contract side of things, they were only provisioned with using the online system.

To the Apple Store's credit they were really good to everyone. Although there is a Starbucks just outside the West Quay centre, but apparently on H&S grounds the WQ staff wouldn't allow Starbucks to provide free coffee (they have a give-away quota for promotions).

So instead the AS staff worked the line with pen and paper, took coffee orders and made coffee upstairs in proper cups. Then the most appropriate wearer of an Apple Genius T-shirt turned up with half a dozen boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts (you can't beat KK's). This was a step up from the pre-packed blueberry muffin and bottle of O2 from O2.

Despite some very flexible management (from Sun's end -- e.g. the Boss) I finally left my place in the queue at around 11:20, with a reservation against a 16GB phone (seeing as all the O2 & CPW stores will now be out of stock!)

I'll be popping back just as soon as I have chance and they've got themselves sorted out!

If I didn't have a conscience, a 1PM LCT slot and a sharedshell appointment for a clearfault on an M5000 at 4:30PM today I may well have called it a proper holiday and not a re-located and combined lunch hours from the past few days and would probably still be there!

Crikey, it's only a phone isn't it?

BTW Well done to all at Apple Store West Quay for making the best out of a bad situation. And respect to the guy from O2 who had what it takes to be on the shop floor explaining (as much as he could) exactly what was going on. It was bad, but you handled it better than BA seemed to deal with T5!

In future though, Apple and their partners should really ensure they have a contingency plan. It might be embarrassing to admit you need one, but it's a whole lot better than not having it one in the first place!