Meanwhile, at the other carriers' stores...

As you may or may not have heard, AT&T (once known as Cingular) has a pretty sweet exclusive on a rather desirable phone being released simultaneously across the country tonight. So with less than a half hour to go until iMania strikes AT&T locations nationwide, we wanted to see how things were going over at the other guys' stores, and we figured that New York City was as good of a test bed as any. Now Manhattan is a rather populous borough, with most retailers seeing a steady flow of customers coming in and out throughout a given weekday, so you'd expect AT&T's three main competitors to continue doing a fairly brisk business even on this holiest of days, right? Not so fast: out of the stores we visited, only Sprint seemed to have the usual excruciating line for service; conversely, you could proud probably have caused a minor stampede among the commissioned sales drones at Verizon and T-Mobile had you so much as ducked inside for a brochure. Click on to get a taste of the telecom world outside the nearly impenetrable dome of influence that Apple and AT&T have magically created today...

The Sprint store on 42nd Street was still packing 'em in as usual, perhaps tempting potential customers with sexy Moguls and the "it's no iPhone but it plays music too" Samsung UpStage.

Seems like no one's home at T-Mobile on 8th Avenue today, where we didn't even have to push people out of the way to get several clear shots of the front of the store.

Things are just as bad at the Verizon dealership across the street from Bryant Park, where despite the COO's iWhatever pep talk to employees and his promise of special deals on select devices, everyone seemed curiously determined to keep heading towards 58th and 5th. Just in case you do get sick of following the iPhone action, though, Verizon stores will all be open until 9PM tonight.

All-in-all, certainly not a red letter for anyone but AT&T in the world of cellphones; consumers, however, can likely expect short lines and enthusiastic associates at their local "off-brand" stores if they do happen to be in the market for a new handset -- and let us just say, if you have in fact avoided being infected with this clever and almost omnipresent virus, we tip our hat to you friend.

[AdvWar @ Jun 29th 2007 5:46PM]

Poor, deserted Verizon....

[Sean @ Jun 29th 2007 5:52PM]

I love cingular, but this sucks that every moron is now switching over to it just to buy this over priced, under-specced brick of a phone. It just means more emo, tight jeaned people will be over crowding my network, taking up bandwidth with my 8525! (oh wait...EDGE on a phone that has every commercial boasting about the internet...? bwahahaha)

[SteveMB @ Jun 29th 2007 5:54PM]

I thought it was coming out at 6PM? It's only 4:51 here. Oh by the way, I plan on getting a 16GB Meizu M8. If it all pans out, and that's a pretty big if, it will be UNLOCKED and have a REMOVEABLE battery, unlike another certain overpriced phone.

[I.M. Yerpappy @ Jun 29th 2007 6:38PM]

OMG. An effing Meizu M8 or MiniOne or whatever they're calling it now. Don't make me laugh. Talk about the true meaning of a Chinese Junk. An iPhone copycat if I ever saw one. At least get something good like a BlackBerry Curve or Nokia N95. Jeez. If you just want to be anti-iPhone at least use some common sense. The company had a mockup of this wannabe PDA, but has it actually gone into production yet? Of course, everything it had in it is better than the iPhone, but it only counts if it's in production. Mayzoo. Apple may sue their copycat asses.

[Jonathan Worrel @ Jun 29th 2007 5:54PM]

lol at t-mobile. no efforts to make a comeback. all in all, not a chance..

[Tom @ Jun 29th 2007 5:56PM]

does this actually count as news or just stating the obvious?

[sean @ Jul 1st 2007 2:03PM]

Oh! So the stores look like they would on any other day?

[Mark @ Jun 29th 2007 6:24PM]

This attempt at "news" reporting is just pathetic.

[SteveMB @ Jun 29th 2007 7:20PM]

Yeah LM, the M8 is a copy because it's all squarish and has a touchscreen like the iPhone. Leave it to the Chinese to create a cheap alternative to the overpriced iPhone. If you have a clue of what Meizu has brought to the table in the past, which obviously you don't, then you would know that M8 will be a great alternative.

[Patrick @ Jun 30th 2007 11:47AM]

Cheap alternative? You mean like $989 cheap?

[bruckwine @ Jun 29th 2007 8:31PM]

THis is a bit of non-news (good work), whether you love or hate the iPhone. Amazing as it may seem almost any potential cellphone buyer you could find in NYC probably already HAS a phone, and any ppl coming or going would be more than likely those with service issues. Add to that the fact is most of the ppl going for iPhones already have phones too, why would you expect to find crowds at other stores outside of the launch of a new device?? I get the feeling there isn't much news this week if sites like engadget resort to padding their pages with articles like this which could more easily fit as footnotes in more important ones!

[Jonathan @ Jun 29th 2007 9:18PM]

Test..
[nothing to see here. move along]

[Josh H @ Jun 29th 2007 10:04PM]

Two weeks going back and forth with Verizon to get my Dsl working. I am glad their store is empty.

[thatguy0109 @ Jun 30th 2007 12:35AM]

Just so you know...Verizon Communications (DSL) and Verizon Wireless (Pictured Above) are NOT the same. You should know your facts before posting. And by the way, I work in a mall with 2 AT&T stores and 1 Apple store and our kiosk still put out 15 numbers in one day!!!!!

[Seth @ Jun 30th 2007 2:25AM]

Looks like a great opportunity to wheel and deal!

I checked out the iPhone tonight, LOVE it but definitely cant live with that network performance (the browser rendered slow even on the stores wifi - ? - but EDGE seemed worse then my tmobile bb)

[Danny @ Jun 30th 2007 2:29AM]

I work at a T-Mobile store about a block away for the At&t store and we had great business today. We had a bunch of acts and funny enough the majority were moving from Verizon and Cingular. lol

[Skeeter @ Jun 30th 2007 3:06AM]

I wish I didn't have Verizon.

[Matt @ Jun 30th 2007 1:02PM]

I fail to see how these stores are gadgets...

[SteveMB @ Jun 30th 2007 4:06PM]

Actually Patrick, the 16GB M8 will cost approximately $450. If you read the comments on that website, it's a scam and they have tried to do that with the Xbox 360 and PS3 as well.