NEW YORK (AP) — A faster iPhone with better software and an improved camera went on sale Friday as hundreds of buyers camped out for hours to be among the first to get one.
About 200 people were at Apple's Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan as the iPhone 4S went on sale at 8 a.m. Steve Wozniak, who created Apple with Steve Jobs in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was first in line at a store in Los Gatos, Calif.
Many said the event resembled a remembrance to Jobs, who died last week.
Emily Smith, a 27-year-old user experience designer in New York, checked in to the line on the location-centric social network Foursquare. She got a virtual Steve Jobs badge that read: "Here's to the crazy ones. ThankYouSteve."
Others joked that the 4S model stood "for Steve."
Una Chen, a 24-year-old banker, said she was just happy to swap out her BlackBerry Bold for the new iPhone, particularly after a BlackBerry outage affected her phone this week.
"It's not good to have a phone and not be able to use it," Chen said.
Wozniak came out to the California store even though he already had two new phones on the way. He told television station NBC11 on Thursday that while he waited for the store's opening Friday morning, he planned on getting caught up on his email and chatting with fans.
Sales were beginning at 8 a.m. in each time zone. They were available at Apple stores, along with those of the three partner carriers, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless. Some Best Buy, Target and Walmart stores and authorized resellers also carried the phones.
The phones also debuted Friday in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Britain. They are coming to 22 more countries by the end of the month.
The base model of the iPhone 4S costs $199 with a two-year contract. Customers have a choice of white or black.
The phone — Apple's fifth — has a faster processor and an improved camera compared with last year's model. However, some customers and investors were disappointed that Apple didn't launch a more radical new model. It's been more than a year since Apple's previous model was released.