iPhone 7 Plus Ordered! One Week to Wait

I didn’t have to think about it for too long or too hard. The iPhone I’ve got now is two years old and it’s time I upgraded. I had already put €500 into Apple gift cards which I was using as a way to save for the next thing. This could have been for this new iPhone 7 Plus or it could have been for a new iMac. In any case, I shall now have to start putting some money aside for the next desktop computer.

Gold Colour 128 GB iPhone 7 Plus

This is the model I’ve gone for. I know that the new special one is the black and shiny or maybe the black and matte finish, but I just wanted something different from before. Never had a gold iPhone, nor ever thought I would want to buy one. I will be using the phone inside of a case and so probably it won’t make a lot of difference to me anyway. Unless I get a clear protective case it’s not going to be in view, whatever colour I get.

Going to Barcelona to fetch it

I thought I would go to the store to fetch iPhone 7 Plus because I wanted to see if there might be some sort of buzz at the store itself. I don’t suppose there will be somehow, but I’ll be glad to get my hands on the phone early in the morning. I won’t have the hassle of having to wait for the useless courier services to arrive and possibly missing me because I’m going to be at work. It’s not going to take me too long to get to Barcelona and back in the morning. I’ll get there, grab my new iPhone 7 Plus and maybe do a little bit of setting up while I’m there. I can make use of their Wi-Fi to get things started and I’ll have a cup of tea before I head back home again. I don’t have to be at work until 2 o’clock so it’s not gonna be a problem in terms of time next Friday morning.

Slightly Messy Ordering Process

I started the ordering process on the iPad because it is a large screen and possibly better to do an order of the iPhone 7 Plus. The difficulty was with adding my Apple gift cards to the order. It was asking for a pin number for each of the gift cards. That was going to take some time to type in each one of those, which is something like a 16 or 20 pin number. I had four or five cards to do that for, so it would have taken too long. There is a button to use the camera to scan codes and it didn’t scan the QR code on the wallet app from the iPhone. It wouldn’t scan the text of the pin number either. So then I had to resort to doing the order on the iPhone.

So I opened up the iPhone and the weird thing was that the Apple Store hadn’t been updated to being open ready for business for the iPhone 7 Plus. Strange because I had already been using it for two to five minutes on the iPad. After another minute or two it did become live. I’ll just have to learn how to be more patient.

I didn’t have the Apple Store app properly set up on the iPhone. It was set to the US store rather than the Spanish store. So I had to go into the account and make changes to that and check to make sure that the bank details/visa card was all correct. As soon as I had done that I was able to go back into the front page and choose the bag containing the order I had already made on the iPad. It was then extremely simple and as easy as falling off a log to do the payment combining my Apple gift cards and the rest from the Visa. It was a little bit annoying having to put in my iCloud password two or three times. Why wouldn’t it let me use my fingerprint?

Things learned along the way

It seems it’s a good idea to do a test run beforehand to make sure everything is set up in the apps you plan to use. This is especially the case if you want to make sure you get in the first wave of orders so you have the device you want as soon as it becomes available.

Making use of the Apple gift cards is a good idea if you want to save for your next purchase. You just have to remember you can only do the order from the iPhone (unless you’re prepared to manually type in the pin codes for each of your Apple gift cards). It makes sense that the Apple Wallet application is only going to be available on one device. We are talking about money here and if there was lag in between the amount being available on different devices then some unscrupulous people might try to use the same gift card twice.

It seemed to make sense to me to try to do the order first of all on the iPad because it’s larger and perhaps easier due to the size. In the end I found it simpler and no trouble at all to do the ordering from the iPhone. The size of the screen you’re working on really isn’t an issue.

What to do next

I really like the case I have, to protect my current iPhone and I’m wondering if there is a version of it for the iPhone 7 Plus. I’ll have to go back through my Amazon orders to find the brand name for the case and have a look and see what’s available. On the other hand, as I have this nice new gold colour (gold is new to me anyway) maybe I’ll see if I can get a transparent case for iPhone 7 Plus. What I like about the case I have already is it has a kickstand at the back of it. It also has another part of the case which you slip the main part into. The whole thing then can be clipped onto your belt or trousers or wherever. There are occasions when I’m not wearing trousers suitable for putting the phone into the pocket, so this clip-on thing is quite useful.

Roll on Next Week

I still think I’m kind of crazy for picking the phone up in the Apple Store. But I don’t get out very often and I’m kind of looking forward to it. At least I can be sure I’ll have the iPhone 7 Plus in my hand probably eight hours to 24-hour’s sooner than I would otherwise. The courier services here are useless and my house can be difficult to find sometimes.