Maybe I have just a little OCD when it comes to waiting for apple products. Anyways, a lot of people have been getting the "preparing for shipment" status on their order page. Once your iPhone ships from Shenzhen, it will fly across the globe to you most likely through FedEx. The iPhone is manufactured in Shenzhen, it will be packed an shipped from there. It will then be trucked to Hong Kong which is basically a few miles away. There it will board a FedEx plane. Once the phone is on the plane, the Fedex uses the plane's tail number as the tracking number for all the packages on the plane. When the plane departs the airport, FedEx will update your tracking info as "departed/left xxx" and give you a time. That time correlates to the departure time of the plane. Go to flightaware.com and using the "browse by operator" look for all FedEx "FDX" flights. The map will show you all FedEx plane in the air currently and their approximate position. Scroll down and look at the list of each flights. Look for all FedEx flights that have their origin as the place your package departed from. This will most likely be Hong Kong Intl (VHHH). There will most likely be multiple FedEX flights from the origin so you want to go ahead and match the departure time with the departure time on your tracking information, there it will also tell you where its flying to. There are several routes that FedEx may route your package. The most likely route it will take is to Anchorage, Alaska where it will be inspected by customs then onto Memphis for domestic overnight flights to your destination. FedEx recently acquired some long range Boeing 777F which have the capability to bypass the Anchorage fuelstop/customs and fly direct to Memphis. It's more likely FedEx will use their older MD-11F to Anchorage so they can be sorted there and fly to FedEx's regional hubs in Dallas, Indianapolis, Newark, or Oakland instead of Memphis to relieve congestion there. Because it is impossible to tell which route your phone will take to you, You can uses these same steps above to find which connecting flights your phone will be on using the tracking information fedex provides.
When i preOrdered my iPhone 4 2 years ago, my iphone took this journey: Hong Kong>Anchorage>Memphis>Sacramento
I also ordered a bumper case which came separately and took this journey:
Hong Kong>Anchorage>Oakland--trucked to--Sacramento
Hopefully this helps for anyone that is OCD about their iphone 5 shipment progress! Don't forget to press refresh a billion times a day!
When i preOrdered my iPhone 4 2 years ago, my iphone took this journey: Hong Kong>Anchorage>Memphis>Sacramento
I also ordered a bumper case which came separately and took this journey:
Hong Kong>Anchorage>Oakland--trucked to--Sacramento
Hopefully this helps for anyone that is OCD about their iphone 5 shipment progress! Don't forget to press refresh a billion times a day!