iPhone X release: How to actually buy Apple's new £1000 phone

It might be the most difficult tech product that's ever gone on sale

The iPhone X is about to be released. But that's just the beginning.

If you want to get your hands on Apple's futuristic, celebrated new phone, then you're going to have to do a lot of work and cross your fingers. Because Apple is going to make it very difficult to buy.

Ever since the phone was first release, it has been followed around by rumours that Apple hasn't made enough of them and stock will be running very low. That's been all but confirmed by both Tim Cook and an Apple press release.

In practice, that means that you're going to have to try very hard to get your hands on it. And rely on some of these tips.

Buying online

The most failsafe way is to buy online, through Apple. Or, more specifically, to buy through the Apple Store app, which seems to get the preference when it comes to online orders.

Online orders open up at midnight, Apple's pacific time. (That's 3am in New York or 8am in London.) That applies wherever you are.

The phone will probably have sold out by 12.05am. So make sure you're ready minutes before, refreshing that app.

While you're preparing, you can pick the phone and storage options you want. (That's simpler than usual, since Apple is only selling two size options and two colour options, which are basically black and white.) This will make the process much quicker, and avoid you losing out on the phone while you dither about which one you want.

You can check prices, colour and storage options on Apple's site now. Helpfully, that's also the link you'll want to use if you're buying online.

Buying in person

Apple has confirmed that some of the phones will be available at the Apple Store. But it's not clear how many, and the company has warned people to "come early".

Given that the availability of the iPhone is completely unknown, it's not certain when you need to turn up, how many there'll be, or whether you're in with a chance at all. But if you don't want to buy online or have another reason for heading to the store, it's at least worth a try.

Unfortunately, there are no tips for this one: just get there as soon as you can, join the queue, and hope that you're near enough to the front.

Buying from your network

All of the networks and carriers will be given an allocation of phones, and allowed to sell them as they wish. The difficult thing is that those will probably be lower down in the priorities, but the good thing is that they might go on sale at different times.

That means that if you're buying through your network, you can probably wait until Friday morning. But the safest way – if you really want a phone and aren't bothered how you buy it – is to rely on this as a fallback.