I have a reservation to buy an iPhone 6S Plus tonight, but it's a gift for someone. If I'm paying full price, do I need to activate it in the store? Or will they let me just walk out with it unactivated?

Calling the store wasn't very helpful since I got routed to a call center where they told me the official policy is to activate it in the store.

So I'm curious if anyone else has gotten an exception and walked out of the store unactivated?

Since the T-Mobile iPhone is also unlocked when purchased from Apple (I hear), I wonder if I could throw my AT&T SIM in it in the store and consider that "activated"? Or I'm probably still an authorized user/manager on the gift recipient's account, so I could conceivably activate it on her account, but I don't want any extra charges to show up or e-mails to be sent out which would ruin the surprise.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2015 04:50PM by Gareth.

People who signed up for the zero % financing upgrade program, which requires carrier activation, have reported that they've been able to just walk out of the store with an unopened box, so I wouldn't worry about it.

I've found that if you give the impression to the Apple store people that you know what you're doing, they generally leave you alone.

TBH, they're not really well versed in the deviating from the script for those who delve into the unlocked/non-contract/MVNO world.

My fully paid AT&T iPhone6S+ came unlocked. I was able to put a tmobile iPad SIM in it and send an SMS text from it.

We preordered a T-mobile iPhone 6S at full price and were immediately able to put a VZW SIM in with no issues.

I'd be very surprised if Apple requires any activation for this.

Some more phones came in stock at a store on my way home and they were getting busy so they were happy to sell me the phone at full price with no activation needed.