(CNN) — Apple fans — including co-founder Steve Wozniak — were lined up on Friday morning for a chance to buy the iPhone 4S, the latest in the company’s line of “Jesus Phones,” which includes many under-the-hood improvements.
The lines, which drew thousands, were part exercises in tech commercialism and part homage to Steve Jobs, Apple’s other co-founder, who died last week following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
In New York, Apple fans created a make-shift memorial to Jobs that included flowers, photos, iPad boxes and apples (as in the fruit).
And in Atlanta, some people said they were lining up for the phone in part because of Jobs.
“I wanted it anyway. But (Jobs’ death) made me sort of want it more because this is the last one I know he worked on,” Dwight Hill, from an Atlanta suburb, said of his decision to buy the phone. “I just hope the company keeps going in the same direction.”
About 200 people had lined up in the wee hours of the morning in New York to buy the new phone, which has a faster processor and a “digital assistant” that responds to voice commands and talks back to phone owners, answering their questions.
Two Apple lovers said they arrived at the flagship New York Apple Store 18 days before Friday, and blogged about the experience on a site called iPhoneWhatever,CNNMoney reports.
The 4S, unveiled last week a day before Jobs’ death, isn’t the mythical iPhone 5 that many Apple fans had expected. But while the refresh of the current iPhone 4, with its lack of striking hardware updates, landed with something of a thud, online pre-orders have been strong.
Apple sold 1 million of the phones in the first 24 hours via its website and carriers AT&T, Verizon and — for the first time — Sprint. By comparison, Apple reported 600,000 iPhone 4 pre-orders last year in 24 hours, but that included orders placed with overseas carriers.
The iPhone 4S went on sale Friday at all 245 Apple stores in the U.S., in addition to the following countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK. The new iPhone will be available in 22 additional countries by the end of October, Apple says. Large lines of people greeted the phones release in Europe and Asia, CNNMoney reports.
Apple stores and other retailers opened at 8 a.m. Friday. Online orders can be made at Apple’s online store as well as on AT&T, Verizon and Sprint’s websites.
If you were hoping to pre-order now and pick up the phone Friday, you’re out of luck. Pre-orders at AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are sold out, and phones ordered through Apple’s website may not be delivered for several weeks.
All of those brick-and-mortar retail stores also will carry the phone, along with select Apple-approved retailers: Radio Shack, Best Buy, Target and Sam’s Club. (Word of warning: Check availability before lining up at one of those third-party sellers. Inventory is limited, and some will be filling pre-orders before selling whatever stock may remain.)
Customers who buy the phone at an Apple retail store will be offered free in-store setup service, personalized instruction on how to set up e-mail and download apps.
So why buy a iPhone 4S?
One of the major selling points for the new phone is Siri, a voice-activated “personal assistant.” The built-in artificial-intelligence app can answer questions, read or set calendar items, read texts and e-mails aloud and perform other tasks. She uses Wikipedia, search engine Wolfram Alpha and other sources to find answers to user questions. And, she apparently has a sense of humor.
The rest of the major updates are on the inside, which may not have made much of a splash but, according to Apple, will enhance the user’s experience.
It contains an A5 processor (the same one in the iPad 2), which Apple says will render data twice as fast as the iPhone 4 and graphics up to seven times faster.
It will feature an 8-megapixel camera, up from the 5-mp camera in the current model, HD video and a stabilization feature the company says will make videos less shaky.
The phone sells for $199 for 16GB of storage, $299 for 32GB and $399 for 64GB, marking the first time an iPhone has had that much memory.
It also seems impossible to separate interest in the iPhone 4S withnews of Jobs’ death last week.
Among the legions of Apple’s diehard fans, some have taken saying the “4S” in the phone’s name represents the words “For Steve.”
Although it’s virtually impossible that the company would have done that on purpose (the phone’s development happened largely when Jobs was still CEO) it speaks both to the long reach of Jobs’ legacy and the cultlike devotion that some Apple loyalists feel toward the company and its products.
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