ADDENDUM: Yes, they lined up like the Apple nuts that they (OK, we) are. And AT&T had glitches activating all the phones, once again frustrating the most loyal consumers:

A spokesman for AT&T Inc., the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S., said there was a global problem with Apple's iTunes software that prevented the phones from being fully activated in-store, as had been planned.

Instead, employees are telling buyers to go home and perform the last step by connecting their phones to their own computers, spokesman Michael Coe said.

 "Hey, thanks for waiting seven hours for this. Now go home, and finish the work for us. There's no way we could have anticipated this much demand. We're only AT&T after all..."

There is a price to pay for being early adopters: the glitches get worked out on you.

(Original article below...)

The true test of fanaticism will come on Friday when Apple releases the second iteration of its iPhone: will people line up like crazy, just as they did when the first iPhone was released last year?

The iPhone 3G seems to offer some significant improvements over its predecessor (battery life, however, doesn't seem to be one of them - According to Walt Mossberg:

...the iPhone 3G’s battery was drained much more quickly in a typical day of use than the battery on the original iPhone, due to the higher power demands of 3G networks. This is an especially significant problem because, unlike most other smart phones, the iPhone has a sealed battery that can’t be replaced with a spare.

Which always makes me nuts. I'm using a Motorola Q right now, and the life on the "extended" battery is short enough. To have to find an outlet by the end of the day every day when I travel is an outright pain.

The big difference is the speed - on the 3G network, accessing the Web is much faster - Mossberg's test found it to be more than five times faster.

Still - the phone's the same size (no "Nano" versions here) comes with the same screen and the same not-so-hot camera (and no video camera - a puzzler) as the original iPhone.

So - will they line up? Will the eager beaver Apple Addicts toss aside their first gen iPhones on which they spent $599 last year to get the upgrade?

If they do, I won't believe for a moment the economy is in trouble.