Those hoping for a release day iPhone 5 may have a rude awakening this morning when they go to pre-order their device, as delivery dates have already stretched out to ‘2 weeks’.
If you’re an East Coaster and your alarm didn’t go off for 3am EST, then the ship may have sailed for you to get your iPhone 5 on September 21st. By 3:55am EST, the site was already reporting a 2-week ship window. Now this doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you won’t get it on launch day, it just give Apple some wiggle room on your delivery date, you may still get a nice surprise a week from today.
For those of you who did try to get through, if your experience was anything like mine, it was a little bumpy. Not Comic-Con tickets bad mind you, but there were a few technical hiccups. My alarm never went off, but my internal clock kicked me into gear right at 3:02am. I hopped on the App Store app on my iPhone 4 and made it most of the way through my order, but the app hung. A final act of self-preservation? Perhaps.
I then tried the web. There was no love for Chrome, it just kept giving me the store is closed error. ie, made it part way through the checkout and then just stopped working and finally I had to resort to using Safari for the PC to get my order placed, finally finishing up somewhere between 3:30 and 3:45am.
If you still want to try to secure a release day iPhone 5, you may still have a few options. You can queue up bright and early on September 21st at your local Apple Store. Or hop in your car RIGHT NOW and head over to Wal-Mart and queue up in line (they open at 8am). Though if you aren’t in line already, you probably won’t be getting one as they are also offering a special sale price on the phone that is cheaper than Apple’s retail price. Another option would be to try to hit your local Best Buy store (opens at 10am) and try to pre-order one there, I’m believe they are guaranteeing release date availability. Other options may be to try your local AT&T store and Radio Shack to see if they are taking pre-orders as well.
