AppleInsider Staff
Apple partner carriers Verizon and Sprint have announced on their respective websites that U.S. preorders for Apple's iPhone 5c will begin at 12:01 a.m. Pacific, 3 a.m. Eastern on Friday, Sept. 13.
Both Verizon and Sprint have confirmed the preorder schedule for Apple's latest iPhone 5c, though as confirmed to AppleInsider on Tuesday, advance orders will not be accepted for the flagship iPhone 5s.
The timing is consistent with Apple's previous launches, including the last-generation iPhone 5. While Apple has not yet announced a specific time for its own preorders, it is highly likely that the Online Apple Store will begin processing orders alongside the carriers.
As announced at Tuesday's iPhone media event, two-year contract pricing for the iPhone 5c will start at $99 for a 16GB model, while the 32GB version comes in at $199. The iPhone 5c is slated to ship alongside the iPhone 5s on Sept. 20, one week after preorders open.
Those interested in preordering can check eligibility status through Apple's website.
Charles Martin
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70 Comments
I smell triskaidekaphobia. Lol. On a serious note though, I feel quite unhappy about iPhone 5C. I think in my dictionary, I can call it a fail Apple product (not because it won't sell, but because as an Apple product, it fails to win my heart). Personally, I think it would have been about 23.45 times better if iPhone 5C was never introduced. iPhone 5 is much much better looking and now would have costed the same. iPhone 5C could have made some sense if it would cost about $400 unlocked. But the fact that Apple would replace a perfectly sexy iPhone 5 with an awful-new-Ive-design-philosophy-inspired 5C, doesn't make me feel good. Anyone sharing my thoughts about 5C?
The 5C should have been a sub 500$ 3,5" iPhone mini. The 5S should have been simply, the iPhone.
Ladies and gentlemen, place you bets on which colour out-of-stocks first.
Kind of sad. This is the first year in many that I won't be staying up late to pre-order. I'll be taking my chances at 12:01am on the 20th, hoping for an In-store Pickup option so I can secure one, and show up after I get off work since I no longer have the sort of job that is cool with me taking a day off to sit in line for a phone.
I was critical of the iPhone 5c pricing in a couple of threads yesterday, but I've now had more time to think about it, and guess what, I've changed my mind.
Those who know me or my posts on this forum, know that I've always been arguing that Apple should never join the race to the bottom game that virtually everybody else plays, and the good news is that with the iPhone 5c, Apple has decided not to play that game. A few ANALysts were butthurt, but screw those people, most of them are clueless. I admit that I was fooled by all of the rumors leading up to the announcement, about a plastic phone, that the C either stood for China or Cheap or Color. I had already resigned myself to the thought that this was going to be Apple's entry into the "cheap" market, and there was nothing that anybody could do about it. This is what the internet and wild speculation leads to, it makes people stupid.
Every once in a while, we get people here whining about the third world and emerging markets, and how the only thing that matters is gaining more customers. That's how some of those douchebag analysts think also. That's Android's game, making tons of crappy phones and dumping them around everywhere to undesirable customers with no money to their name.
With the iPhone 5c release, I think that Apple is saying, we're a premium brand, and don't expect anything else from us. If you can't afford an iPhone, then too bad, go buy something else, go get an Android for free and knock yourself out. An iPhone is not a human right, and if somebody lives in a poor country (so called emerging markets), and makes 5 dollars a month, then there's no iPhone in this person's future. Apple has better things to do than make cheap crap for people who can't afford anything. Does that really sound like a smart business move?
The iPhone 5c is indeed a premium product. This is not Samsung plastic that we're talking about here, this is Apple plastic, and the phone feels great according to many reports and first hand impressions. The internals are better than what would normally be Apple's number two phone this time around, the iPhone 5. The battery is larger, the Facetime camera has been improved and the LTE bands have been expanded, making the iPhone 5c better than the iPhone 5 (at least internally), and the iPhone 5 was no slouch.
And it doesn't really matter which phone people decide to choose. If somebody wants an iPhone, then they'll have a few choices to choose from. It's a win, win situation for Apple. Forget about poor people, emerging markets and all of that nonsense. Apple makes the best phones in the world, running the best mobile OS in the world, with the best app store in the world and the best apps in the world, by far. Some people line up for days to hand over their money to Apple.
Only desperate companies with no talent and poor product needs to play the pricing game by making ridiculously low priced items. That says a lot about their customer base and the worth of that customer base. Apple doesn't need to do that, and in retrospect, I'm glad that Apple decided to stick to it's principles and not make a "cheap" phone.