PHOTOS: The iPhone X is on sale now — and people lined up for days to buy it
The iPhone X: It's really popular.Rob Price/BI
The iPhone X is on sale now — and people have lined up for days to be the first to get their hands on it.
At Apple Stores from Singapore to San Francisco, long lines have snaked around city blocks as die-hard Apple fans waited to be the earliest owners of the new Apple smartphone. The bizarre consumerist ritual has become synonymous with Apple's mega-hyped, carefully stage-managed product launches.
Announced in September, the iPhone X is the first major redesign of the iPhone in years, with an almost edge-to-edge screen, facial-recognition technology, and an increased emphasis on augmented reality. It became available to preorder last Friday but sold out within minutes — prompting some Apple customers to line up for days to try to get one in person.
Business Insider visited Apple's UK flagship store on London's Regent Street to check out the surreal spectacle for ourselves. Keep reading to see the photos from London and elsewhere in the world ...
This is the iPhone X. It's in short supply, and well-reviewed. Some people are pretty keen to get their hands on it.
The lines were shoulder-to-shoulder outside an Apple Store in Hong Kong.
Only about a dozen people were lined up outside the Regent Street Apple Store to buy one ...
... with another 200 or more forced to wait around the corner.
There were similar lines elsewhere — here's Tokyo.
And here are some people in Berlin.
Hundreds of people also lined up in New York City — as the video below shows.
Customers spill into the street adjacent to the Apple Store on New York's Fifth Avenue.
The first customers in line are greeted with applause by Apple employees as they enter the Apple Store on New York's Fifth Avenue.
The first in the London line, Adam, said he'd been there since Tuesday. He actually first turned up Sunday night but saw there wasn't a line yet and decided to come back later.
The keenest Apple fans came stocked with supplies: sleeping bags, camping chairs, food, and even tents.
Apple offered some people at the front of the line wristbands so they could leave overnight and come back in the morning — but some refused to take them, preferring the experience of waiting overnight.
And of course, the media was there too, documenting the scene and interviewing the customers.
When we popped down Thursday night, one man in the line said he had already preordered four and was buying another two for his family. Another guy didn't even want one but had been asked to line up to get one for his boss.
In Singapore, too, people camped out overnight.
As it approached 8 a.m., when the devices went on sale, Apple employees inside got increasingly enthusiastic, cheering, clapping, and waving.
And then on the hour, the doors opened — and the first customers were ushered inside, greeted by a wall of cheering Apple employees as if they had run a marathon.
Maybe two dozen customers were let inside to buy iPhones, while hundreds waited outside.
Adam seemed to disappear; instead, the first customer was Marco Pierre White Jr., the son of a celebrity chef.
Angela Ahrendts, Apple's head of retail, has been pushing a new "town square" aesthetic for Apple Stores, and it was on full display Friday. Some customers and employees sat around chatting in an odd faux casual manner.
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