Pre-orders for the iPhone Duo officially kick off this Friday, but if you want to get your hands on Apple's foldable as soon as humanly possible, there are some things you can do to try and minimize those inevitable delays. We already have a rundown of different tips and tricks you can employ to secure your pre-order, and arguably the most important is preparing everything ahead of time.
Apple's letting would-be Duo owners set up their entire purchase ahead of pre-orders opening this Friday (October 16) at 8 a.m. ET / 5 a.m. PT. This doesn't let you skip the line in any meaningful way, but it does let you go through the entire ordering process early — effectively saving your iPhone Duo order to your basket ready to checkout later.
This may not seem like much, but when you're battling legions of people (and scalpers) that are simultaneously trying to secure iPhone Duos for themselves, every second you save could mean knocking days (or weeks) off your delivery estimate.
How to prep your iPhone Duo pre-order
There's nothing particularly special about the way this process works. You simply head to the Apple Store website and work your way through a purchasing page just as you would with any iPhone model. This means picking things like color, storage level, carrier and AppleCare plan, while also securing trade-in quotes and organizing how you're going to pay.
That last part is probably the biggest time saver. If you're not intending on paying for your device in full, you're going to have to go through all the financial hoops involved in applying for a finance or leasing plan. That's something you may not have been otherwise prepared for, and this way you can get yourself approved ahead of time.
Heck, even those of you planning to put the whole purchase on a credit card will be able to save yourself the hassle of hurriedly entering all those numbers on Friday morning. Most importantly, this process also lets you get through the verification stage, and as we saw with the PS5 restock fiasco of five years ago, being forced into that process can be difference between securing a unit and not.
Things to remember
There are some things this process does not do, however. The main one to remember is that preparing for a pre-order is not the same as actually pre-ordering. You have to return to the Apple Store to complete the checkout process after 8 a.m. ET on Friday October 16. You're also not obligated to actually follow through with the purchase either, and if you decide against pre-ordering an iPhone Duo you can simply not do that.
This preparation process also doesn't seem to take into account whether your credit card is at, or close, to your credit limit. My monthly credit limit is (by choice) about $300 less than the price of an iPhone Duo, not counting the cost of carrier activation or AppleCare+. Yet the pre-order preparation process was happy to take my details, and American Express didn't flag any issues during the process.
Needless to say, you should make sure your purchase isn't going to get declined, or a lot of this effort will go to waste.
Failing this, you can always try and secure an iPhone Duo from someone else. AT&T and Xfinity Mobile are among the carriers that have announced pre-order deals for the iPhone Duo, and if your delivery estimate is too far in the future, you can always try your luck standing in line at your nearest Apple store on October 23.