They ship by region and configuration. If you go to AT&T'a forum and read last years preorder thread, you can get an idea of how they shipped. Which makes sense, the planes coming from China all have the same phones on them. Then they get to Texas and AT&T sorts them and outs them on planes to regions. Last year they started with the lower gig models and worked up (which seems backwards to me, if I'm paying for a 256 gig phone, I should get mine first!). Since we are seeing the 128's moving, I think we will see the 256's in the next day or two.
This is why someone that ordered at noon might get their tracking number first, if they are say in California and that plane is getting loaded and sent off first, if they know they will have enough phones to fulfill up until that order time, those phones might get shipped before someone that ordered in New York but ordered at 3 am.
We will all still get our phones. Most likely before the shipping date we were given. That isn't a complete guarantee, they might come ON those dates, especially the later dates.
