Hasta La Gadget!

The iPhone 3G S went on sale at 7 AM today, and of course Apple fans lined up for their phones. The line-up at the flagship Apple Store on 59th Street in Manhattan was clearly less than Apple had planned, though. While there were about 100 people on line when I got there at 7:20, there were empty corrals prepared for more. Folks on Twitter are reporting the same phenomenon all around the country. Jason Hiner says there were about 100 people lined up in Louisville. Eric Zeman stood in a 30-person line in New Jersey.  Rene Ritchie found a small line-up in Montreal.

The line-up seemed to be as much for media as for iPhone buyers, who this year had a home delivery option. (In other words, if you were on line, you were doing it to socialize, not because you wanted an iPhone.) Wandering around the scene, I bumped into CNN, Bloomberg, R3 Media, Xinhua and several local TV channels all interviewing the new iPhone owners. The usual crowd of ringtone merchants, phone recyclers and such were also trying to market their wares to both the iPhone purchasers and the media.

We’ll have our full iPhone 3G S review on Monday. For now, you can see what I think of the new iPhone OS 3.0, whether the $99 iPhone 3G is a good buy, or read my roundup of all the existing iPhone 3G S reviews out on the Web.