As it promised during Tuesday's announcement, Apple has officially begun accepting pre-orders for the sort-of-new iPhone 5C in its online store as of 12:01am PT today. In case you missed the announcement on Tuesday (and our subsequent hands-on experience with the device), the iPhone 5C is mostly an iPhone 5 on the inside, but it comes in five colorful plastic shells rather than the black and white aluminum bodies of last year's flagship.
The phone starts at $99 with a two-year contract for a 16GB model, and $199 with a two-year contract for a 32GB model (both models are also available unlocked for $549 and $649, respectively). Customers in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the UK who order their phones now should begin receiving them on September 20th, the same day that Apple is due to release the higher-end iPhone 5S.
If you don't want to order directly from Apple, you have a few different options. One is to order directly from your mobile carrier, which in the US probably means you'll be buying from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, or T-Mobile. Several retailers are also planning to offer pre-orders, and some of them will give it to you for below Apple's suggested retail price—Wal-Mart will sell you an iPhone 5C on Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint for $79 on-contract, for example (you'll also be able to get an iPhone 5S for $189 on the 20th, $10 less than Apple's standard starting price). Other major retailers like Best Buy and Radio Shack should also be accepting in-store pre-orders when they open this morning.
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