The iPhone 4S came out Friday morning, bringing diehard Apple fans from across campus and New Haven out to the Apple store.

As of 10 p.m. Thursday, while employees still moved around within the store, a handful of people had hunkered down in chairs and on the ground for the evening. The line only grew throughout the day Friday.

“I’m just going to sit here and hope the time goes fast,” said Anthony Inguaggiato, a resident of East Haven. “I just want to get the phone.”

Inguaggiato was at the store with two friends, who had all brought chairs. Tonight is not his first time waiting hours in the dark for a new Apple product: he camped outside an Apple store for the iPhone 4 last year, he said.

He said he is most excited about Siri, an application on the iPhone 4S that responds to voice commands.

“You can talk with the phone! You can tell it what to do; it can read your texts,” Inguaggiato said. “You can ask it if you need an umbrella.”

Jason Paunetto, another New Haven resident, said he came to the store “just for the hype and all that.”

“I always wanted to camp out at an Apple store for an iPhone,” he said, adding that he also saw his nighttime vigil as a tribute to the late Steve Jobs.

Asked if he had come to the Apple store’s grand opening on Sept. 24, Paunetto said no.

“This is my grand opening,” he said.

Phil MacEachron ’15, after purchasing the iPhone 4S, applauded the work of the

Apple employees. “They were really friendly and helpful,” he said. “They

helped me get the phone working, and the service in general was very well

done.” He also added that the new iPhone looks “really cool.”

CORRECTION: Oct. 15, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that there is an Apple store in Branford, Conn.