With a good portion of luck I was able to procure an iPhone 3GS yesterday, which was the Norwegian launch day. About 8 months after I first got a touch the Nokia E51 has been retired.

The “plan” yesterday was for me to order one at work when they put it up around 9AM. Contrary to NetCom I’m not a moron and I have seen such launches before; poorly planned “hey everyone come see the site RIGHT NOW – all 100000 of you”-launches that crashes the servers and makes everything go slow for hours (*erm* gdgt.com). I was therefor not surprised when that’s what happened. After hitting the F5 button (refresh page) about 5000 times I still hadn’t gotten any further than the shopping cart and gave up to go back to work. At about 10:45, before going to lunch, I called a local store and asked if they were out yet. The guy said pretty much, but there was a single 16GB black version left. I asked if he could put it on hold until later, and he could. A couple of hours later I got off work and picked it up, paid the 1899 NOK ($310) and went home a happy camper.

So far the experience has been both weird and fun. I’m not used to not carrying a separate phone at all, and have on several occasions grabbed my “iPod” (which is of course the iPhone) and started looking for the E51. The concept of having a data connection I can actually use (I’ve previously had pay-as-you-go data plans or a 100MB/month data plan) is also confusing, but it’s also really nice. I did a few speed tests while walking Kismo this morning and actually got 2100kb/s download speeds in the middle of the forest, which was a bit of a surprise. Some people complain my provider (NetCom) has bad coverage and in some areas they do, but I can’t really complain.

Ironically, yesterday I also got my old 1G iPod touch back after 3,5 months. Word of advice: don’t use the Norwegian tech store Spaceworld if you plan on sending in anything. They don’t do it, just leave it in the back for a few months and then when you ask about it, then maybe something will happen. Either way, I now have 3 Apple devices; the 1G touch, the 2G touch, and the new iPhone 3GS. Will be selling the first and keeping the second as a backup, at least for the time being.