New phone, who dis?

I picked up my new iPhone 17 yesterday morning, and it was a bit of an adventure. My pickup window was 8:00-8:15 am, and I arrived at the tail end of that window. I was quickly checked in and paired with a specialist, and we started the process.

How it started

Since I’m an iPhone Upgrade Program customer, I have to trade my previous phone in in-store. I’ve done this every year for the past 4 or 5 years, and there always seems to be some glitch with verifying the trade and closing the previous loan, and this year was no different. This was the 3rd year in a row something went wrong on the first try, but the issues are always resolved quickly and aren’t a big deal.

The next part was where we ran into problems. The specialist had me erase the old phone (and eSIM) before we unboxed and started setting up the new one and it didn’t occur to either of us at the time that this was going to be a huge problem when I started setting up the new phone.

The problem was that in order to activate the new eSIM, T-Mobile texted a 6-digit code to my phone number — the phone number associated with the eSIM that I just deleted from my old phone.

Oooooops. This was not good.

My old phone was in a return envelope with no eSIM associated with it and my new phone was pretty much bricked because I couldn’t get through or around the activation screen where I had to enter the code.

The specialist called whatever hotline they have with T-Mobile on launch day and explained the situation. They told him that if I had access to one of the other lines on my account, they could text the code there. Unfortunately, the other lines on my account are my twins’ phones, and it was 5:45-ish in the morning in Portland, so that wasn’t an option.

My other option was to go to a T-Mobile store and they could help me as long as I had my ID on me. So, I left the Apple store a little after 9 am with a non-working phone and headed to the T-Mobile store up the road. I got there a few minutes later, and…

They were closed and didn’t open until 10. Well shit. Then I remembered there’s a T-Mobile store in the mall — which is next to the Apple Store — so I drove back over there. I park, get into the mall, and…

All of the stores in the mall are closed and don’t open until 10 am either. Fuuuuck. It’s now around 9:30 and I have a decision to make. Do I drive the 45 minutes home and have no phone service until I can get back out to a T-Mobile store, or do I suck it up and go back to the store and wait?

I went with option B. I drove back over to the T-Mobile store and decided to wait the 20 minutes until they opened. Once they opened up, I was led inside and handed off to a rep named Maddie. I explained what was going on, and she was confused about the screen that I was stuck on because apparently there was a way to bypass it in the past. She messed around with it for a few minutes with no luck, but then I could tell she had an idea. She told me she’d be right back and went into the back room.

When she came back a minute later, she was carrying a demo phone and a physical SIM card. She associated the SIM with my phone number, popped it in the demo phone, and had me reboot my phone and go through the setup to the part where we got stuck. It asked for the code, the demo phone dinged, and we had the activation code!

I put the code in, finished activating, and verified I could make a phone call before leaving the store. Maddie, you’re a fucking rock star, and I hope they send me a survey about my experience at the store because I’m gonna tell them you deserve all of the money. ALL of it.

How it’s going

As for the actual phone itself, I’m happy with it. As soon as I took it out of the box, it felt noticeably lighter in hand than the 16 Pro. I wish the color was a little less pale — it almost looks white in the daylight — but that’s really my only complaint so far. I haven’t played around with the camera much, so I don’t have an opinion there, but the screen looks good and battery life has been good as well. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the camera once I have a chance to go shoot some photos, so stay tuned for that.

After all that, the phone works great… and at least now I know to never, ever erase the eSIM first.