iFixit Heads to New Zealand to Buy, Disassemble iPhone 3G

There's an early contender for the coveted Farthest Traveled to Buy an iPhone 3G Award. (The prize? A lot of frequent flyer miles. And an iPhone 3G, presumably.) Our colleagues at Computerworld New Zealand report that the fourth person in line at the Queen Street Vodafone store in Auckland was Luke Soules, who flew in all the way from California for the big release--the first in a series of iPhone launches across the global over the next 24 hours or so.

So what possess a man to eschew the U.S. release of the iPhone 3G and brave a 13-hour or so flight in order to be among the first to get his hands on an iPhone?

Soules also happens to be CXO of iFixit, a California-based provider of Mac and iPod parts and upgrades. And according to Computerworld New Zealand:

Soules' mission is to get his hands on an iPhone 3G, and as quickly as possible figure out what is inside it.

"A friend of mine has an office in Auckland, so hopefully, at 12.30am, I will be pulling [the device] apart," he says.

Indeed, the pictures of the disassembled iPod 3G are already up at iFixit's Web site. So feel free to pop over and either marvel at Soules' commitment to his stated objective or to shake your head at his swath of destruction.