The electrical engineering student travelled to Auckland's Sylvia Park to line up an hour before the phone went on sale.
He said it was a birthday present from his parents.
"I should be at university studying,''said Buckner as he clutched his gift.
"I'm pretty excited, of course.''
Auckland man Mauritz Mulligan was also among the first to collect the phone.
His old Sony Ericsson could only be used for sending messages after it was accidentally dropped in water.
The maintenance engineer said he planned to charge up his new smartphone and "figure the damn thing out.''
"I feel energetic. I can play with my knew toy now.''
Samsung spokesperson Mike Cornwell said there had a strong pre-launch demand for the phone.
He said the latest phone raised the bar in smartphone technology including sporting the largest smartphone high definition screen on the market.
But his personal favourite development was the phone's smart pause feature.
A sensor inside the phone monitored your eyes and could automatically pause the screen if you looked away.
The phone also featured a touchless scroll feature that required a simple tilting motion to look through lists.
New Zealand continues to be one of the world's leading users of smartphone technology.A March Horizon Research poll of 2,161 people aged over 18 years showed around 1.67 million adults have a smartphone. That number has skyrocketed by nearly half a million users in a little over six months.
