Joburg, holograms and a secret iPhone 4 launch

23 Sep 2010, Posted by Cape Town Girl in CTG, advertising, bloggers, iphone, joburg, kindness of strangers, shopping, south africa, technology, 3 Comments

Last week I get a cryptic phonecall from Iain, another SA blogger you may know as @pleasefindthis. He says, ‘I’m confirming you for an event next week Tuesday. You’ll get flight details later in the week.’ Being a curious and carefree kinda gal who’s always up for a crazy mission, I said ‘There’s no way I’m flying to Joburg for a party dude.’ To which he replied, ‘You will regret not coming to this party. Trust me.’

I don’t know what it was but something, something in his voice just said iPhone 4 (4, 4, 4,…), so I decided to go with it.

I kept it to myself since Iain informed me there was a ‘media embargo’ on the event, but could barely contain the excitement by the time I found myself in a car with @marcforrest, another SA blogger who’d been invited in a similarly cryptic fashion. We were taken to a hotel in Midrand by the super friendly Jonas, who’d been hired as our driver. We arrived at the hotel with the instruction to meet in Room 3 at 3pm. In Room 3 there was a long table at with 10 iPhones lined up on it. Pre-charged, and re-packed, so we could get the full ‘opening experience’. We signed super-basic, hassle-free contracts for a year’s worth of pre-loaded data and airtime on MTN microsims, and the very well-mannered Raphael from MTN helped us set up the devices.

“Just to be clear,” said Iain, “You guys are under no obligation to blog or tweet about this. We, on behalf of MTN, just feel that if any people deserve this device, it’s you guys. We’re giving you data and calltime for a year but you don’t even need to keep the sim – use it, don’t use it. Now enjoy your phones, see you at the party later.”

Awesome, right? Just made me want to explode in tweets and blogposts about how much I love MTN. Wouldn’t you feel the same way? A service provider taking care of bloggers, their most loyal customers and avid users? Unheard of! No frills and fuss – they just got to the point without pretense. Guys – this is groundbreaking consumer relations. I mean, have you ever? Others who got phones included ChrisRoperZA, Grif from Watkykjy, Uno de Waal, Khaya Dlanga, SizweNdhlomo, Angie from iFashion, Pippa Tshabalala from The Verge and Seth from 2oceansvibe. There were some more… it’s all a facetime blur.

Khaya Dlanga's deranged digital life exposed - 2 Blackberries, 2 iPhones.

The party was a sweet gig. It was freaking amazing. Every single surface was an LED screen, which  had a countdown clock on it. We drank Zen martinis. We ate sushi. And then the lights flickered out and the phones made this dramatic entrance, descending in glowing pods from the ceiling, hands grabbing at them. No jokes. Video to come later.

A hand grabs frantically at a demo iPhone 4 as one of the pods descends

The bar - also an LED

Screen madness!

A real life hologram! Video also to follow later

Angie from @iFashiontoYou with her new phone

Once the phone was officially launched, Fistaz Mixwell and Roger Goode took over and that’s when the tequila started. More of the general LED madness:

The round LED lifted up off the bar to reveal the DJ

Not sure if you'll be able to process this image, but basically, the tequila in the foreground is resting on the bar, and the screens in the background are projections of the DJ being filmed live from above him. Look closely, you'll see his decks.

More LED madness.

The official twitter hashtag for the night was #iYoba, and there was a tweetstream coming up huge on one of the walls.

2OV, CTG & PFT

A huge thank you to MTN for flying us out and showing us such a good time. And for the phones. Those are cool too. From the way twitter was going on, MTN definitely threw the better launch party. We had to wear shades to deal with the light from all the STARS.Whew – Joburg – like the internet – is completely in the grip of iPhone fever, by the way. It’s madness! You can’t not get caught up in it!

Guys, the iPhone 4 is mindblowingly amazing. No doubt I will harp on about it a lot here, you have been warned. HD camera and movie editing on the handset – this is going to take our video vibe to a whole new level. Click here to check out iPhone 4 pricing with MTN. Apparently you can get one on a R379 a month contract and the phone comes free. Going to upload my videos asap! Click here to check out my full flickr set.

CTG