iPhone Arrives in NZ

Walking down Cashel Street tonight after the ACT Dinner, and we spotted some hardcore Mac fans queueing up outside the Vodafone shop. The iPhone will be officially available for sale from 00:00am, Friday 11 July 2008. For months now, trend starters (such as my brother) have imported their own iPhone and jailbroken it. Of course, Trademe, in all it's infinite wisdom, has seen fit to ban the sale of imported iPhones until they are officially put on sale in New Zealand.

Consumers can either fork out $979 for their standard 8GB 3G iPhone, and run it on prepay, or they can sign up for one of the plans which is on offer. These range from $549 up front and $1,920 over two years, right up to $199 up front and $6,000 over two years. For people who need to use their phone a lot, it's not a bad deal. When you've actually seen what an iPhone can do, the digits after the dollar sign won't matter so much to you, as you are simply blown away by the break-through technology that you can hold in your hands.

The iPhone may be taking the world by storm, but big player RIM isn't taking this lying down, with the release of their new Blackberry Thunder just around the corner. Dubbed by some as "the Apple Killer", or A.K., the Thunder looks like it has a lot going for it, with it's expandable memory (MicroSD card slot), camera and hi-res touch-screen, as well as a few physical buttons which some of us actually appreciate.

A girl dressed in purple, and a cool gorilla offered us a bar of chocolate which we happily took. Helped us get into the spirit of the thing. A busker was busily setting up his keyboard, while a mobile-espresso van was getting set up at the side of the road.

Update: Scrubone blogs on the iPhone