Shades of Style: My Journey to the Perfect iPhone 15 Pro Max Case


My iPhone 12 Pro served me neatly via photographing in a single day educate journeys and journeys through Germany, however its cameras had been getting a little bit lengthy within the enamel in comparison to the most recent telephones. The time was once ripe to improve to an iPhone 15 Pro Max, so I went to my service shop and picked one up. However there was once an issue. Upon receiving a case that I ordered on-line, I spotted I would gotten an iPhone within the flawed colour. Must be simple to change it out, proper?

Proper?

At the entire, it took me over a month to switch my telephone out for some other one in a unique colour. I drove to more than one shops. I known as helplines. I stopped up having to send my telephone to a regional warehouse, after which name to look if I may get a brand new one shipped out. Neatly, it may’ve been more straightforward if I would made some other alternatives. 

After all, I were given what I sought after: an iPhone 15 Professional Max that precisely matched a case with plenty of non-public that means. If you have to honor your formative years iMac along with your fashionable case, would not you? Within the hopes you by no means have to head via one thing identical, I’m going to inform my story of flawed assumptions and belated discoveries — along side the teachings concerning the telephone business I realized alongside the way in which.

A blue iPhone wrapped in a blue-green case rests on a wooden table.

The iPhone 15 Professional Max in its blue hue with a Spigen case wrapped round it evoking the unique “Bondi Blue” iMac G3.

David Lumb/CNET

You’ll be able to have any iPhone colour you wish to have, so long as it is blue

After the use of an iPhone 12 Professional for 3 years, I opted for the iPhone 15 Professional Max, as I sought after its 5x zoom, along side 512GB of garage for quite a lot of on-device area. 

I am these days a Verizon plan subscriber, so it made sense to visit one in all their shops to get my new Professional. I walked in, chatted with a pleasant clerk, and walked out with an iPhone 15 Professional Max in titanium blue, the one colour they’d with 512GB of garage. 

After that, I ordered a case from Spigen that captured my creativeness once I noticed it. It was once a phone case styled after the enduring “Bondi Blue” iMac G3 from 1998. When it got here within the mail, I made a sad discovery: the telephone’s darkish blue hue did not fit the case in any respect, which had white translucent highlights harking back to the vintage iMac. 

I may’ve left it. I must’ve left it. However as a cellular reporter, I felt forced to satisfy my very best smartphone imaginative and prescient to make 2024 appear to be 1998 in one of the simplest ways. All I wished was once a white iPhone 15 Professional Max. Unknown to me on the time was once that it will take a month to get one — I wished a style with 512GB.

Side view of four iPhone 15 Pro devices

The brand new iPhone 15 Professional titanium colours, from left to proper: Black, white, blue and herbal.

Apple/Screenshot via James Martin/CNET

Existence is more straightforward with decrease garage

The perfect factor to do could be to force again to the Verizon shop and switch it out for a white one. However since I wished a white one with 512GB of garage, I figured I would name first. After talking with a useful worker, I realized that any location must have the configurations available.

Tragically overconfident, I drove out to the nearest Verizon shop, consistent with Yelp. Sadly it was once a third-party shop that could not care for my trade. So I drove to the next-closest professional Verizon retail location that had a white iPhone 15 Professional Max however solely the 256GB style. The workers there discovered a shop with a 512GB model in white that was once some other 20-minute force away.

Unfortunately, the stock instrument was once flawed, I used to be informed. What is extra, the body of workers there did not suppose Verizon offered white 512GB fashions in-store. I would have to big order it — via calling that centralized hotline.

A couple of days later, I known as the hotline, and a pleasant operator helped me order a white 512GB iPhone. However first, I needed to send my present telephone again, and that intended swapping carrier to some other telephone within the period in-between. Fortunately for me, as a reviewer, I had a couple of mendacity round. 

I rapidly agreed to switch carrier to some other non-iPhone I had available (the operator simply wanted its IMEI quantity). However I foolishly forgot that that telephone was once locked to another service. So as to add insult to harm, I have been calling the operator on my blue iPhone 15 Professional Max, which I did not notice could be an issue till the decision went useless when she transferred carrier.

Phoneless, bereft in a chilly and uncaring international, I drove throughout the town to pick out up my outdated iPhone 12 Professional that I would left with my circle of relatives to improve to from their older iPhone. I will’t bear in mind the remaining time I went any place with out my smartphone’s information umbilical to the outdoor international; it was once so surreal and setting apart that it forced me to reckon with our modern phone dependency

In spite of everything, I drove again to the unique Verizon shop to assist switch carrier again to my outdated iPhone 12 Professional, the place I bumped into some other a laugh fact of contemporary smartphone switching: Bridging the sector of SIM and eSIM.

Hand holding the iPhone 14 Pro Max with the home screen active

The iPhone 14 line started the eSIM-only pattern for US fashions, and it leads to a few headaches when converting units.

Patrick Holland/CNET

The professionals and cons of leaving SIMs for eSIMS

For years, reviewing other telephones was once as simple as coming out my SIM card and placing it into the brand new telephone. However in upgrading to the iPhone 15 Professional Max, I surrendered my account identification to the virtual international and transferred it to an eSIM — as a result of, in some other give up to tendencies, the USA fashions of the iPhone 15 sequence should not have bodily SIM slots, a transformation that debuted within the iPhone 14. 

The excellent news is that it was once simple for me to stroll right into a Verizon shop and feature them switch my carrier to the eSIM slot at the iPhone 12 Professional (fortunate for me, that style was once the primary to make use of eSIMs). 

The dangerous information for us reviewers, and any person who steadily adjustments telephones, is that it takes a identical interplay along with your service to switch your account between other telephones’ eSIM slots. The ones folks rotating between many handsets in finding this procedure will get in the way in which the place bodily SIMs didn’t.

CNET Senior Editor Lisa Eadicicco had a identical state of affairs years in the past when she known as her service on the finish of the workday to change carrier to an eSIM on a telephone she was once reviewing, leaving her to trip the subway house with no telephone. However as she defined to me, swapping eSIMs may end up in some very atypical roadblocks. 

When she switched from an Android gadget to an iPhone by the use of eSIM remaining yr, she inexplicably misplaced get right of entry to to MMS (multimedia messages) between her handset and different Android telephone homeowners. A lot of troubleshooting or even her service could not assist, however trawling boards printed a solution: resetting the iPhone’s settings totally.

“My enjoy was once hectic, and it is exhausting to pinpoint precisely what came about and why,” Eadicicco stated.

After my very own eSIM hassle, I were given my outdated iPhone 12 Professional again, shipped out my blue iPhone 15 Professional Max, and… waited. I wasn’t precisely positive when it will get to a Verizon warehouse. Every week or so later, I known as the client beef up hotline and requested them if they would gained the telephone (they’d), if my account was once credited (it was once), and if I may then order the telephone I sought after in white (I may). After a $50 restocking price was once debited, the telephone was once on its means. 

Once I spread out the white 512GB iPhone 15 Professional Max and slapped that case on, all was once neatly. And I got here away with some courses from the ordeal, too.

A white iPhone wrapped in a blue-green case on a wooden table.

The iPhone 15 Professional Max in its white hue, wrapped in Spigen’s iMac-looking case.

David Lumb/CNET

The takeaways of torturing myself

Except you could have finished this service retail shop rodeo earlier than, you most likely have no idea that it may be tough to get the proper colour and garage configuration. The general public, myself incorporated, normally choose from what they have got to be had. I simply came about to have a particular (and wonderful) imaginative and prescient for the way I sought after my telephone and case to appear.

It was once a marvel to find that, a minimum of in my house, Verizon shops should not have each and every unmarried colour and garage configuration. If you wish to have person who wasn’t most often offered in-store, it’s a must to order it from a regional warehouse. No longer a large deal at the entire, however fascinating to look presumed marketplace forces come to a decision in-store choices. Maximum patrons are most likely positive with the titanium blue colour for the iPhone 15 Professional sequence, for the reason that different alternatives are white, black and the gray-tan “herbal titanium.”

I may’ve made my existence so much more straightforward if I had simply purchased the iPhone 15 Professional Max via some other store or by the use of Apple itself, merely returning and exchanging it for the right kind colour and configuration. However no longer each and every on-line or in-person store has financing choices like a service, nor would they have got the similar trade-in offers that could be extra beneficiant at carriers operating promotions.

An iPhone in a bright blue case sits below a bondi blue iMac G3.

The Spigen C1 Vintage case suits the colour of the unique 1998 iMac G3.

Spigen

Making my 2024 iPhone recall the sweetness of my 1998 iMac

It is simple to omit that the iPhone in my pocket is a contemporary miracle, particularly in comparison to the tech I had as a child. That is why I discovered it so pleasant to represent that quantum soar when adorning my telephone. Rising up, my circle of relatives had an Apple Macintosh IIsi. It was once compact and had a user-friendly enjoy that ran Child Pix and phrase processing. However in the future overdue within the ’90s, my circle of relatives upgraded from its yellowed desktop to one thing in point of fact next-generation: the unique iMac.

With a teardrop shell of putting Bondi Blue-and-white plastic, the 1998 iMac G3 was once the long run — streamlined, stylized and able for one thing brand-new to our space known as the web. That revolution was once encased in brilliant, translucent blue-green plastic that rode the wave of see-through client tech, which packs much more character than lately’s generation of black or silver gaming consoles, laptops and desktop PCs. Telephone producers get a little bit extra colour into their lineups, however they nonetheless really feel like the similar glass-and-metal rectangles launched yr after yr. 

Once I noticed Spigen’s case, my foolish nerdy middle was once yanked again in time to when merchandise felt tactile in some way that remains with me — I will listen the iMac’s disc force come out after pushing its central button and really feel the notorious puck mouse underneath my hand. 

Admittedly, I have spilled a ton of virtual ink inadvertently shilling for a telephone case. However it speaks to a personalization and sense of belonging that I need from the issues in my existence, particularly the glass rectangle in my pocket that serves as my gateway to the outdoor international. When I am typing Slack messages to colleagues or paintings emails to assets, I will take a look at my case and be introduced again to the times when the entirety someday was once bursting out of Bondi Blue plastic.

However when you ever discover a telephone case that is bottled a few of your formative years, I’m hoping you’re taking my tale to middle and keep away from a month-long odyssey in knowing your smartphone dream.

iMac throwback: Apple’s candy-colored historical past, from 1999 to 2021

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