There was news earlier this year that Apple was implementing a system which lets them update iPhones to the newest iOS while still in boxes in stores.
As a sort of curiosity, this really seems to be working quite well.
I took my now-becoming-sort-of-regular 800 km roundtrip to the nearest Apple Store (in a different country) on Friday – as everything is much too expensive at authorised resellers where I live, so the trip is always worth it; on this occasion, I saved about €400 doing it.
I bought the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which I set up yesterday. I was surprised it did not ask for a software update on setup, only to find out that it was already on 18.2 when bought, a mere day and a couple of hours (!) after 18.2 had been publicly released.
I also bought the new iPad mini (upgrading from the previous one in the end, though I debated this for quite a bit) that came with iPadOS 18.1. That one required an update to 18.2 on setup, taking an additional twenty-ish minutes.