iPhone 5s Officially Launching at 12:01 AM on Friday, 8 AM in Stores

Waiting to get your hands on the iPhone 5s? You’re not the only one. Apple has confirmedthat they’ll be launching the iPhone 5s starting at 12:01 am on Friday for online orders, and 8 am local time at brick-and-mortar locations, which means that Apple Stores across the US will be opening up early in order to get the new iPhone out to customers sooner.

As for carriers, we’ve already heard from Verizon that it will be selling the new phone starting at 8 am local time as well, and it’ll also be taking orders online starting at 12:01 am Pacific time, so if you don’t want to bother with the crowds, this is how you can reserve your own unit before anyone else does, but you’ll have to wait for it to ship to your doorstep obviously, so that’s definitely one drawback of ordering online as opposed to waiting it out in front of the store.

We haven’t heard from other carriers yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised if AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile followed suit with a similar launch schedule. As for retail stores, we haven’t heard their plans either, but Walmart has several 24-hour stores, and in the past it has launched several Apple products at midnight — a whole eight hours before Apple Stores would begin selling them in stores. It’s not clear what Walmart will do this year, but we wouldn’t be surprised if a midnight launch was in the cards.

Both the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c will officially become available this Friday. The iPhone 5c was put on pre-order last week, and while some models are seeing a bit of a back-order, the highly-anticipated device hasn’t sold out completely yet, which means you’ll most likely have a good shot at getting the model you want come launch day.

The iPhone 5s will start at $199 for the 16GB, with the 32GB costing $299 and the 64GB flavor at $399. The iPhone 5c will start at $99 for the 16GB version and $199 for the 32GB version. The iPhone 5c replaces the year-old iPhone 5 and both phones essentially share the same specs, except the iPhone 5c has a new plastic shell and a slightly better camera this time around. Apple has already begun marketing the iPhone 5c as the phone for everyone, thanks to its selection of color choices that will appeal to most users.