Apple store in meltdown as iPhone 3Gs fail to activate

Still clad in our jammies, we headed down to the Apple store in the early hours of this morning to speak to the brave (and possibly quite mad) souls who had queued up all night to be the first to get their hands on a Jesus Phone Mark II. Seems like they were to be in for a longer wait...

First in the queue was David Suen (below, right) who had rather craftily bought his space from someone on eBay. Yes, that's right, someone queued for 18 hours, just to sell the space.

And it's a good job that David didn't queue, becase by 9.45am, nearly 2 hours after the flagship store's doors opened, still no one had an activated iPhone 3G.

It seems that O2's online registration system in the Apple Store was refusing to accept payments or details. Apple staff were saying that the problem was with O2's servers not being able to deal with the demand.

Over 150 people were queuing this morning for the 8.02am launch, but we left having waited fruitlessly for someone to emerge with an actual, activated phone. Apple reckon it could take two hours for customers to get activated.

In other news, it seems as if there the 16GB white model WAS available (at least in this store), despite reports to the contrary. Pity you can't activate it though...