Globe Telecom officially launched the Apple iPhone 4 yesterday to their Corporate subscribers. That’s 2 days earlier than the announced public launching of the hottest phone in town.
Pre-orders started last Saturday via a special link sent by Globe through email. I pre-ordered mine around morning of Saturday. Got an email stating that I’ll be getting a call or email to confirm my reservation. After 4 days of waiting and praying, I got a call from one of their representative saying that I can claim the phone on Friday. FRIDAY! September 24!
I was a bit shocked when I heard I can get mine 2 days before the public can get one (excluding those who bought it from the grey market a.k.a. GH).
Fast-forward to yesterday, I was at Globe’s Corporate office in Valero, Makati at 8:45AM. Â I had to go early because I have work that day. The mood was nice and pretty festive and everyone looked happy. We can’t blame those who went there early, they’re getting the sweetest gadget of the year. I was pretty giddy myself, I didn’t get to sleep that much the night before.
I went to the registration line and I was given a number. At the waiting area, we were served iced teas, roast beef sandwiches and ham & cheese paninis. I waited for 20-30 minutes before my number got called and I was ushered to the first desk.
After checking all my forms, I was given again another number to the releasing line. This is where the service dropped big time! People waited for at least an hour or two. Some people were already shouting because of how slow their process was. I was feeling a bit annoyed that time.
By 11:00am, the entire area was filled with hundreds of people, all standing. Others were already making rude comments. One guy even went to the desk and claimed that 3 others were able to get their iPhones even if they had a later number. The only thing that Globe did right was they filled the entire room with drinks and food to appease the people.
Anyways, when I got the phone, we went to the activation area. There, I spent only 5 minutes to activate the phone. They gave me a Php1,000 Power Mac Gift Certificate. I reserved two black prepaid 16GB iPhone 4 so I got 2GCs as well. Each 16GB iPhone retails for Php37,500.
Last step of the grueling process was transferring my old iPhone line sim card to a new micro-sim. I gave my sim to the girl and they entered my number to the system and voila! My number is now transferred to the micro-sim (t’was pretty fast).
We were just waiting for the signal to appear. Upon seeing the 3G signal on my new iPhone 4, I started to smile. All my frustration from the waiting and standing in line for hours simply fade away. I went home a happy iPhone 4 user.
Note: Globe still uses the old iPhone 3G paper bags from 2 years ago Philippines iPhone buyers will not get the free bumper case announced by Steve Jobs a couple of months ago. I triple checked it with the managers there.
I just synced all my data and apps to my phone. And so far, I’m loving the iphone 4. I’ll be writing my iPhone 4 review in a couple of days. :)
Editor’s Note: Dale is a special assignments contributor at YugaTech. You can follow him on Twitter at @dalekins. This coverage of the iPhone 4 corporate launch is written by Dale with slight revisions from me. Should give people an idea on what will happen during the public launch this Sunday. – Yuga
@Kris: Kris, have activated your microsim? Or still got a problem until now?