This day in Engadget: waiting in line comes to an end as the iPhone 3GS launches

Welcome to ‘This day in Engadget‘, where we crack open the archives and take a whimsical look back at the memories and moments of our storied past. Please join us on this trip down random access memory lane.

Try to recall if you will, June 19th of 2009, a rainy, ugly day, when the iPhone 3GS launched. People had pre-ordered, sure, but a few hundred people lined up at the cube in New York City anyway, and our very own Paul Miller braved the elements to document the proceedings for us lovingly. And here we are, in 2010, on the cusp of the launch of the iPhone 4, which has pre-sold about 600,000 units by last count. We’ve heard random reports of a few people already waiting in line (see the photo below of two early birds snapped by a reader in Santa Monica), but we’re going to stay inside for now and take a look back at June 19th in the history of Engadget below.

Also on this date:

June 19th 2009: The Zune HD was confirmed to have a Tegra processor, Microsoft extended Windows XP’s downgrade availability to 2011, and Nokia’s N86 MP and N97 launched to great fanfare in the United Kingdom.

June 19th 2008: The Mars Phoenix lander discovered ice on Mars, Chevrolet’s Volt plug-in hybrid got priced at $40,000, and Dell launched its UltraSharp 2709W 27-inch LCD.

June 19th 2007: A man was confirmed to have gotten two Zune tattoos, Sony’s Ken Kutaragi, father of the PlayStation, stepped down, and Apple was rumored to have a cheaper (and possibly smaller) iPhone in the pipeline.

June 19th 2006: Taiwanese company Foxconn denied operating sweatshops, Steve Jobs was rumored to be fighting for $9.99 iTunes movie downloads, Verizon sued Vonage for patent infringement, and we caught sight of a Batman Begins casemod.

June 19th 2005: Monks were reported to have started using hyperspectral imaging to retrieve ancient texts, and Engadget took a little aggression out on the mainstream media.

June 19th 2004: We checked out the SciFi Museum in Seattle, Washington, caught sight of a 70 megapixel, panoramic camera, and were introduced to a product called the Pixie.

[Thanks to Craig for the photo of the store in Santa Monica]

This day in Engadget: waiting in line comes to an end as the iPhone 3GS launches originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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