iPhone queue chaos

iPhone 3G: is it worth waiting for?
iPhone 3G: is it worth waiting for?

If you are thinking that the queues for an iPhone are dying down, think again.

O2's flagship store on Oxford Street, London, saw its automatic systems go down today, meaning that since eight this morning only a handful of people have had their iPhones processed.

TechRadar spoke to some of the crowd about the situation and they were none too happy with what was going on.

One person who had been queuing since the store opened said: "Apparently their automatic system has gone down and it is taking the folks at O2 a lot longer to process things. The upgrades are taking a lot longer than expected too."

While we were there the queue did seem to be moving faster, but the delay has meant that lots of people have been waiting longer than expected to get their mitts on an iPhone 3G.

Unprecedented demand

O2, The Carphone Warehouse and Apple stores everywhere have been bracing themselves for today's iPhone launch, but reports do suggest that they hadn't quite realised the demand for the 3G iPhone was going to be this huge.

O2 announced yesterday that most of its stores will only be stocked with a "few dozen" iPhones. This may mean that there will be a lot of unhappy customers by the end of the day.

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Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.

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