Five Craziest Things Apple Fans Have Done to Get Their Hands on an iPhone

On September 9, Apple unveiled its hotly-anticipated iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, which are sure to rouse the excitement of Apple fans when they hit stores at the end of this month. 

However, fans' love for their iPhones and iPads has sometimes reached dangerous levels; here are some extreme cases of Apple fanaticism.

1. Chinese Schoolboy Sells His Kidney and Buys iPhone 

"I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn't have the money," the 17-year-old boy told Shenzhen TV in the southern province of Guangdong.

"When I surfed the internet, I found an advert posted online by an agent saying they were able to pay 20,000 yuan (3,140 USD) to buy a kidney."

Without his parents' knowledge, the teenager traveled from his home in Anhui Province to the city of Chenzhou in Hunan Province, where a surgeon at a local hospital removed the organ, after which the boy received 22,000 yuan. He spent the money on the Apple device, and reportedly also bought a laptop as well.

"When he came back, he had a laptop and a new Apple handset," said his mother, who showed the TV station the scar where her son's kidney was removed.

"I wanted to know how he had got so much money and he finally confessed that he had sold one of his kidneys."

In November 2012 five people were jailed for their role in the illegal organ transplant, including the surgeon, who received a three year prison sentence with a reprieve of five years. The boy reportedly suffered renal deficiency after the operation, and received compensation of 1.47 million yuan ($231,000) from the defendants.

2. Saudi Man Asks for iPhone Dowry for his Sister

In September 2014 a man in Saudi Arabia reportedly asked for an iPhone 6 in return for his sister's hand in marriage.

"The brother's condition supplants the father's request for a simple amount of money as the dowry for the marriage," reported the Kuwaiti daily Al Anba.

The brother asked for the phone from his sister's fiancée when it was still unavailable locally, and said the marriage couldn't go ahead until he had received the phone, which went on sale in Saudi Arabia on September 26 last year.

3. US Couple Fly to Australia to be World's First in the iPhone Queue

David Rahimi and his girlfriend Jasmine Juan found a novel way to beat the lines of iPhone fans last September, when they ordered the iPhone 6 online in the US as soon as it came on sale on Friday September 12, and requested store pickup – 12,000 kilometers away, in Sydney, Australia.

After a 14 hour flight to Sydney, they were first in line to pick up the phones a week later.

"At midnight California time last Friday, we went online, made our reservations, and made sure we got the phones that we wanted, and now this morning, we're here," explained Rahimi, from California.

Rahimi runs the mobile technology website PhoneBuff.

"I made sure to get in the reserve line — not the crazy long non-reserve line — by 5:00 am Sydney time, and it happened to be that I was the first one there."

"It feels awesome, being one of the first to get a device that so many people, including myself, have been looking forward to," said Rahimi. "I love mobile technology and being able to get probably the most sought after phone first is amazing."

4. Couple Sell Their Newborn Daughter to Pay for an iPhone

A couple from Shanghai were arrested after they sold their baby daughter, and spent the proceeds on an iPhone, as well as expensive trainers and other luxury items. 

Before the baby's birth the parents placed advertisements seeking between 30,000 yuan (4,700 USD) and 50,000 yuan (7,850 USD), for their daughter. They covered up the pregnancy from friends and relatives, and after a home birth they handed the child over to her purchaser.

"We did not give the child away to obtain profit, but to give the child better guarantees," the couple, who are both unemployed and already had two children, protested during their trial in October 2013.

5. German Schoolboy Drains a Whole Pond to Get the iPhone He Dropped

In July 2014 a school fishing trip turned into the stuff of nightmares for a 16-year-old in Germany, when his iPhone slipped out of his hand into the pond. When the anglers supervising the trip refused to allow him to dive into the pond to get the phone, the boy secretly returned some hours later, armed with pumps and two hoses.

"I knew the phone was probably dead but wanted to get the data card back with the numbers, pictures and videos of my friends," the boy told the local paper in Cologne, Germany.

"I thought two pumps would drain enough of the water from the pond so I could find my cellphone."

Unfortunately, the toilet of the angling club into which the boy intended to drain the water was not connected to the sewage system, and he instead succeeded only in flooding the nearby parking lot. The owner of the parking lot called the police, who dashed his hopes of retrieving the phone.

The schoolboy, who had to pay for damage to the toilet, the parking lot, and the pond, was nevertheless unrepentant, insisting, "It almost worked."