The iPhone 4S launched at midnight through both Vodafone and Telecom. We've got pictures from both events - some better than others - and an unboxing of Apple's newest phone.

At about 4:30pm yesterday afternoon I arrived Telecom's Victoria Street West store, where the company was holding a midnight launch.

There were people there at the time, and first in line was Ami Yang. She'd been there since 8:30 in the morning.

Yang said her iPhone 4 was her first iPhone. She'd been disappointed that there was no iPhone 5, but decided to pick up the 4S anyway.

Funnily enough, she was a Vodafone customer. She planned on buying her handset at full price from Telecom and sticking with the Vodafone network. When she lined up at 8:30am, it was before Vodafone had announced they were also holding a midnight launch.

Vodafone was also holding one at their Queen Street store, but no one was lined up when I cruised past at 5pm. When I popped by just before midnight, though, there were at least a hundred people lined up outside Vodafone, and there was a big red bow on the store's doors.

You'll have to excuse the quality of the images here, as they were taken on my smartphone, which doesn't have the best lens on it.

As you can see, it went all the way down the street and around the corner. Not quite as big as the iPad 2 launch at Yoobee in Newmarket earlier this year, but still quite a line.

If you're more interested in looking at our review device than reading about launches, we don't blame you. We unboxed the iPhone 4S over on our Facebook page, so check it out! You don't have to sign into Facebook or even have an account to view the images.

Posted by Siobhan Keogh at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )

No one will be surprised to know that a huge, huge number of gadgets come through our office (and our test labs) every month. At the moment, we're got two really nice Android phones from Sony Ericsson's new Xperia range, the Ray and the Active.

No doubt the appeal of the Ray, on the left, is immediately apparent - it's sleek, shiny and it definitely has the better specs of the two. But what's interesting about the Active is its ruggedness and what you get for the $400 pricetag. We haven't yet tested it thoroughly (we're doing it for our December-January ish), but in terms of rugged gear, the Active has a higher certification than the Motorola Defy, released earlier this year. It can be kept up to 1 metre under fresh water for 30 minutes, and even better, when it's wet the touchscreen works just as well as it does dry. I've tried it out and I've gotta say, it's pretty clever.

It's the fact that it's a niche product that makes it interesting, to me. Of course, it's all regular Android 2.3 with Sony Ericsson's four-corner skin, but the open software allows for manufacturers to go crazy with the hardware and do some interesting things that you can't do with other operating systems. I'm looking forward to getting more in-depth with the device, because so far it looks like a winner.

Posted by Siobhan Keogh at 5:05 PM | Permalink | Comments ( 0 )