Last night we were so excited about the launch of the N97, we decided not to go to bed and head in to London at 5am. It's the first time I've been up and out at 5am since.. well perhaps ever! but the excitement was enough to keep us awake.

We arrived at the Nokia flagship store at about 6am and surprisingly there was no queue. I guess my experience with the iPhone launches had me expecting people camping outside, which we almost did btw.

However across the road at the Apple store, which is directly opposite the Nokia store was a different story. There was a strong queue forming even at 6am. By 7am the queue for the iPhone was close to the end of the road while Kenny and I were still the only 2 in line. We felt a little out numbered but we held the fort

Apples doors opened at 7am, letting the first batch inside while we sat across the road freezing our b... butts off. While we were stood inline T3.com popped over and talked me in to giving a short video interview on why I was choosing the N97 over the iPhone. It was nerve racking to say the least but they were really nice. Shortly after another couple of guys popped over and asked if I'd be willing to give a short interview, only this time the video camera was huge and they were from Channel 4!

Anyway Nokia finally opened their doors at 9am for us bloggers to let us have a play with the new handsets Nokia N97 and Nokia N86. I'll quickly mention that the N86 takes an absolutely incredible picture. When inside we met Rafe from Allaboutsymbian, Carl from Nokiapp, Robert from Nokiausers and Emkwan from the Emkwanproject who were all really nice.

Nokia offered us the chance to buy the N97 before the store officially opened to the public and of course we'd already pre-ordered ours, so we went ahead and purchased the very first UK retail Nokia N97. It's our claim to fame.

The fun didn't end their, Adam from the Nokia store had arranged some extra goodies for us including a Nokia Pen, notebook, Candy, Lanyard and some other cool Nokia memorabilia. He then took us upstairs in to Nokia's conference room where they have THE biggest TV I've ever seen, I believe it's 103", it was incredible to say the least. It accompanied by a spread of snacks and drinks. I guess the main purpose of the exercise was to help build stronger relationships between Nokia and it's bloggers as well as a chance for us bloggers to put faces to names. It was a really nice touch and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and were thankful to be part of it, thanks to everybody we met and of course Adam for making us welcome.