What the Tech: Should you allow some gifts to be opened early?
By JAMIE TUCKER Consumer Technology Reporter
Parents may know you should always put bicycles together ahead of Christmas morning.
A child’s excitement about their first 2-wheeler is quickly dampened when they have to watch dad spend half of Christmas day putting it together.
The same is certainly true today for tech gifts.
In the last five years, many of the major tech companies including Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Sony have had trouble meeting the demand for new activations within the first few hours of
Christmas morning.
If you’re giving someone a smartphone, video game system, or Apple Watch, unwrap it before Christmas day, activate the device, and either wrap it back up or place it under the tree.
If you’re giving someone an iPhone, activating it requires only that you have access to their old device and place it near the new iPhone. Onscreen instructions will take you through all of the
steps of getting the phone activated. You may also need to log in to your cellular provider’s server.
It wouldn’t hurt to set up Apple Watch, AirPods, iPads, and other Apple products ahead of time.
Activating gaming systems may require you to know and enter your username, email address, and password so surprises won’t be easy if you want to get those devices up and running early.
If you’re giving someone a video game for one of those systems it might be a good idea to install the app ahead of time. Even if the gift is a video game disc, it might need to be updated.
In past years this can take hours.
The same applies to smart home devices although Amazon will ship its Echo devices already tied to your account.
If the device requires batteries, such as iPhones, smartphones, watches, tablets, and game controllers, unwrapping them early allows you to ensure they are fully charged. Otherwise, the
receiver of the gifts will likely have to sit with the device tethered to a cable and electrical outlet.
Using any of these tech gadgets isn’t as simple as plugging them in.
