It turns out Apple did its market research before trying to sell smart phones the size of your face. Apple and all the major carriers appear to have sold out pre-orders and are quoting longer ship times for the iPhone 6 Plus.
Apple has not released numbers for how many iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 models were available for preorder, and an early rumor indicated that there may have been fewer of the larger model available. Still, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel told Recode that demand is higher now than it’s been in either of the last two years.
Presales were slated to begin shortly after midnight Friday, but the Apple Store was still down two hours afterward due to increased traffic. The store was active by midmorning, but with increased shipping times of three to four weeks for the larger model. (The regular iPhone 6 is still slated to arrive on the previously stated date of Sept. 19.)
Similarly, on the Sprint website, there is only a delay for the iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 6, clearly in lower demand, can be delivered right on time.
In the Verizon store, the company has added a red sticker to its photos of the larger model, indicating that it will be delivered by Oct. 14. The regular iPhone 6 will also be delayed, but only until Oct. 7.
See also: What Apple Announced: The iPhone 6, Apple Watch And More
Ever since 2010, when the HTC released its 4.3 EVO 4G, cellphone manufacturers have been producing bigger and bigger ones. (At 5.7 inches, the iPhone 6 Plus makes the EVO look downright tiny.) Marketers have even coined a term—”the phablet”—to best describe these increasingly tablet sized phones.
What makes a large phone desirable now? Probably, enough time has passed and technology has improved so they no longer remind us of the bricks we carried around in the ’90s and ’00s. Slim and slight and all screen, the iPhone 6 Plus has the oversized features people want and Lilliputian where it counts.
