AT&T customers who have purchased or upgraded to the new iPhone 4 have started to receive SMS text messages pointing them to a newly published resource guide containing “important information about activating your device.”
The link directs recipients to the page at www.att.com/iphone4upgradesupport which provides all the information needed regarding how to activate the new iPhone – yet another indication that iPhones may be shipping, as reported elsewhere, a day earlier than previously expected.
According to the AT&T activation guide, there are just four “simple steps” to activating your new device. However, as previous iPhone owners know, AT&T’s and Apple’s activation systems tend to get bogged down as a large number of new iPhone owners attempt to activate their phones at the same time.
Last summer, with the launch of the iPhone 3GS, some users reported that it was taking up to 48 hours to complete the activation process.
The issues caused by this overload of activation requests have gotten better over the years, at least – the 3GS delays were a vast improvement over the 3G problems that plagued the 3G launch.
But when a company sells 600,000 phones on its launch day alone, as Apple has with the iPhone 4, activation issues are bound to happen.
…or are they?
According to numerous sources, Apple has begun sending out emails to some iPhone 4 customers informing them that their device will arrive on June 23rd – a day earlier than expected. The most obvious reasoning behind these missives is to spread out the activation process over the course of two days instead of one.
Of course, new iPhone 4 users are just glad they’ll be getting the revamped device a day early, no matter the reason. And being the recipient of the text message doesn’t necessarily mean you’re among the chosen few to get your iPhone 4 early.
