I am functioning on about 18 hours of no sleep right now, but I have an iPhone 4 to show for it.

The Journey

I was going to get to the Apple store in Perth, WA (which opened at 8am today, July 30) at about 5am last night to start signing up, but when I heard that at about 12am-ish there were already 20 people lined up I dropped everything and got ready. I was actually looking forward to “camping out” all night – it’d be like a real camping trip except without the tent…or the wilderness…or sleeping bags.

My excellent boyfriend dropped me off in the city, where the line was at about 20-25 people. I soon realized that I really should have brought a sleeping bag. Despite having two jumpers on, I was still freezing. I decided to keep myself occupied by reading Animal Farm on my iPad. I almost finished the book, but put it aside when my toes started to go numb and I decided to walk around to warm up.

The six hours of waiting didn’t pass as slowly as I thought they might. I read Animal Farm, talked to some great people I’ve met, and generally waited. Security started showing up at maybe 4 or 5am from memory and setting up plastic barricades along the road for the line. At maybe 7am-ish the line had grown significantly and we heard cheering from the Apple store employees (who were nice and warm inside the store *jealous*). The cheering was very enthusiastic, but many of us toward the front of the line didn’t really feel like cheering too much. We were cold, hungry, and waiting through the night. We just want our phones! It was nice that all the employees were so excited, though, Apple looks like a pretty cool company to work for. And toward the end the cheering actually woke me up a bit from my disoriented, tired state so I guess it worked!

The line was separated into outright and contract purchasers. The vast majority were there to buy their iPhones outright. Because I was toward the front of the line getting into the store didn’t take long (they were allowing people through in groups of three and stopped when the store was at capacity (not sure what capacity is in terms of numbers). Once in the shop, we were put into another line which moved quite slowly. But before too long I was paying for my brand new 16GB iPhone 4! Next thing I knew I was sticking my micro sim (cut out using a very nice guy’s micro sim stapler earlier that morning) and getting it activated, which took a few seconds. Then I quickly rushed off to work as I was running late, dashing into a shop to purchase some screen protectors on the way. The iPhone 4 was officially mine!

The First Impressions

When I got to actually play with my iPhone on the short train ride to work and look over it a bit more carefully my first impressions were positive. The design is excellent – the device feels more “solid” and well-put-together than the previous model did in my hands. I love the more edgy, non-curvy form factor.

The display is just amazing. I especially noticed a difference in the text when writing text messages – that’s just where the Retina display stood out the most to me personally.

The picture quality is awesome, easily beating out that of my boyfriend’s HTC Desire in low light when we compared them that night – both with and without the flash.

The Death Grip

The death grip is definitely there and present. Holding the phone in my left hand in death grip fashion consistently causes at least one bar to drop out for me – holding it for longer has dropped up to three. The speed test results were pretty bad:

	No Death Grip	Death Grip
Download	943 kbps	352 kbps
Upload	1271 kbps	592 kbps

iPhone 4 - no death grip

iPhone 4 Death Grip Speed Test

To be fair, this wasn’t a consistent reading – I tried this multiple times and a couple of times the download speed was actually a bit better when I “death gripped” the phone. However, the upload speed was consistently worse, under half or more of the non death-grip speed tests.

The Thoughts So Far

So far, I’m really glad I got the iPhone 4. The antenna issue is bothering me and hopefully Apple will send me by free Bumper soon. But other than this, the phone is one sexy beast.

Tags: apple store, death grip, iphone 4, iphone 4 perth, perth apple store