Bonus post for those of you still stuck in the office! I was left behind here as the rest of the DealBreaker team left for the beach.

You may have noticed others here at DealBreaker hinting toward my iPhone coverage around launch time at the end of last week in a couple different posts, and now I present to you what resulted.

The lines outside the Apple stores at the Fifth Avenue and SoHo stores slowly grew from Monday onward and I made sure to be right there to document the madness history-making launch. As you all know, Greg Packer, dubbed the iLoser, a compulsive line-sitter, was at the forefront at the Fifth Avenue Apple store. He even has his own blog now. Second in line was David Clayman (his blog here) who, after changing his story a couple times, decided he was buying the phone for charity.

Over at the SoHo store first in line was the "Keep A Child Alive" foundation who is auctioning the Jesus Phone iPhone off in a package on eBay now. They of course wanted to wait at the flagship Fifth Ave. store but since Greg beat them to the punch, they decided to mope at the SoHo store instead. After talking to them on numerous visits to the store (close to the office, conveniently), I found out they had five people in line (working shifts of only 4 hours) and each was buying two 8GB phones, but one wonders if the other nine have vanished into their pockets since only one is up on eBay now.

Filming the entire event live was Mogulus.com at the special website iPhoneLaunch.tv. They interviewed me briefly as I scouted the location and aired it live on the site (unfortunately not archived for my self-referential enjoyment). Supposedly on launch day they had four cameras out and about filming the event, but their site couldn't handle all the traffic (max 800 viewers?!), so I can't verify.

Through downpours and sweltering heat, hundreds of people camped out for this revolutionary (Jobs's words, not mine) device for many days and I was forced sure to cover it all. On launch day I visited both stores but stuck to the Fifth Ave. store (which had unreal amounts of press) for coverage of the opening at 6PM. After the jump are two slideshows of my attempts at photojournalism, the first one of the Fifth Ave. store and the second of the SoHo store.

The best iPhone review I have read (which says the Mail app is terrible) for those of you who still haven't gotten your hands on one of these can be found here.