Better place to purchase iPhone 5 on Friday

If you don't have a pre-order, there's a slim chance you'll get a phone. If you must have the phone on Friday, the best solution (in my opinion) would be to get in line at your apple store (they'll likely have the largest stock on hand) the night before. They usually set aside a few phones for people who did not reserve, but you could also spend hours in line and go home empty handed. Just to see what in-store pickup was like, I had pre-ordered the iPhone 4 for launch day store pickup. Even with a guaranteed reservation, I was in line from 5:00 AM till after 1:30 in the afternoon before I even made it into the Apple Store. There was another line for non-reservations, but they take the reservations line ahead of the non-reservations. And this launch is far larger than the iP4 launch was.

Luckily I pre-ordered mine through AT&T online Friday and should be here on the 21st. There is a small, local AT&T store 1 mile from me, so if you have an AT&T store (or Verizon if you use that carrier), you might consider going there first thing on Friday. If the store opens at 8am or 9am, try maybe getting there an hour ahead just in case and see how many others are already in line waiting. I would bet the Apple store's will probably have the most people in line, so go to one of the carrier stores, whichever you use and have, that might be your best bet. Another alternative would be Walmart, Best Buy, etc, whoever sells them near you, but I would guess the phone stores will have the least traffic, in my opinion. Good luck.

Like rbrylawski sad, there is a slim chance of getting the phone. So, if I were you I world wait until everything dies down then get it at the apple store or the best buy store.

Hope this Helps:):)

When the iPhone 4s came out, if you had not camped out overnight outside of the two Apple Stores in my area, you did not get one. They sold out within an hour of the doors opening and all those people had been there at least 18-24 hours previously.

I'd expect to see the tents going up around the Apple stores sometime on Thursday, sooner if the mall security will allow it (some peopel clearly have way too much idle time in their lives).

I'm actually glad I'm not eligible for an upgrade for another month, and when I am ready to get mine, I'll just order it and let the nice Fedex lady bring it to me.

Saw on the news yesterday morning that people were already starting to camp out at one of the Apple stores there in NY (Manhattan), which is 5-6 days before they go on sale. WOW!

They're also camping out in other cities, as well as in Europe. Amazing. Apple sold something like 2,000,000 phones in the first 60 minutes of pre-orders. Also amazing.

Aside from taking a fake hand grenade with you to the store to clear out the line ... sit and wait.

Sorry if that is deemed too inappropriate.

Then again ... even that may not be enough ...

I can honestly claim that I have never wanted nor needed anything so much that I would every go to such insane extremes.

I can also honestly claim that, even as a kid or college student, I never had enough idle time to do such a thing - do these people really have nothing else to do for the entire week?

Best ting to do is go to your phone dealer's store to get the phone, since everyone and their momma will be lined up at Apple.