To commemorate the release of the iPhone 7, here are seven times when Apple fans let their passion for the gadgets get the better of them.
Thrifty young Ukrainian changes name for latest iPhone
Last week a young Ukrainian changed his name to iPhone Sim (meaning iPhone 7 in Ukrainian), after an electronics store offered a free handset to the first five people to do so.
iPhone Sim shows his new passport in this Facebook post by another user.
It cost iPhone Sim just $2 to change his name, far less than the iPhone 7, which retails at more than $850 in Ukraine.
20 iPhones from 20 boyfriends enable crafty Chinese woman to buy a house
Last week the Chinese media reported a cunning plan executed by a woman from the southern Chinese city of Shenzen, who asked 20 boyfriends to buy her the newly released iPhone 7.
The boyfriends obliged, and the women then sold the iPhones on Hui Shou Bao, a mobile phone recycling site. She received 120,000 Chinese yuan (about £14,500) from the sale, with which she put down a deposit on a house in the countryside.
Last month Attapon Thaphaengphan flew from the Thai capital Bangkok to Australia, the first country where the new iPhone 7 went on sale, on Friday 16 September.
He spent 18 hours queueing outside the Apple store in Sydney, in order to be one of the first to get his hands on an iPhone.
However, Thaphaengphan found time to enjoy the city, too. Before making his way to the Apple store, he met with friends and did some sightseeing in Sydney, and documented his trip on Facebook.
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 a local paper in Cologne, Germany.
Weil sein Handy reingefallen ist: 16-Jähriger pumpt
— BILD Digital (@BILD_Digital) 30 июля 2014 г.
Anglerteich ins Klo. http://t.co/mNHVdGVZgZ pic.twitter.com/kTJnRWsYTR
"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."
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.
Couple in China 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.
"I wanted to buy an iPad 2, but I didn't have the money," the 17-year-old boy told Shenzhen TV in China's southern province of Guangdong, which reported the story in 2011.
"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.
