With just four days to go until the iPhone 3G lands on Earth, the Apple faithful are keeping hype and hysteria in steady supply.

Or maybe not. While a line has already formed outside Apple’s flagship store in Manhattan, it looks like a group of environmental activists are trying to hijack the launch to bring attention to green issues, rather than enthusiastic gadget freaks setting up camp.

While in the UK, O2’s web site appears to be struggling to meet demand after the operator started taking upgrade pre orders from existing iPhone users on its network on Monday.

Although the UK carrier is expecting heavy demand for the device and is limiting the iPhone to one per subscriber, the company said it will try and deliver as many pre orders as possible on July 11 – the day the device officially launches.

Bad news for potential prepay users though as the operator updated its web site to say that the prepay version of the device won’t be available until “later in the year,” rather than on the same day as the contract version as previously expected.