Originally Posted By: tman
Apple won't let you leave with an unactivated iPhone. The old iPhone 2G they'd let you leave with it and activate it at home but a significant portion were hacked instead. They didn't want that to happen this time.

I walked out the door with my iPhone still in the shrinkwrap, though I did go through the AT&T upgrade procedure at the store on their little PDA checkout devices. Came home, plugged in the phone, and was presented with the same iTunes activation system as my iPhone last year.