My Cellphone My Terms

iPhone 4 to launch in Canada on July 30th

Today Apple held its iPhone 4 press conference to address the issues associated with iPhone 4 signal defect, jokingly coined by Steve Jobs as “Antennagate”. During the press conference Steve Jobs also indicated that the iPhone 4 will be available to 17 other countries including Canada on July 30th. So the iPhone will be finally here at the end of the month – Bell has confirmed that the iPhone 4 will be available on July 30th, so it is confirmed.

Apple’s Bumper phone 4

So back to the iPhone antenna defect, essentially there will be no recall of the 3 million iPhone 4 cell phones sold to date, instead Apple will address the issue as follows:

• Apple will provide a free “Bumper” or rubber case to each user who purchases an iPhone 4
• If you have purchased a case already from Apple it will be refunded
• Full refund to every user who is unsatisfied with their iPhone 4 experience

This promotion will be available until September 30 at which point Apple will consider whether to end the promotion and move forward or to continue the promotion.

My Thoughts

This is clearly a band aid solution to a problem which has plagued an otherwise ground breaking cell phone launch.  The “Bumper” solution buys Apple more time to figure out a software fix that will adequately address the issue. In addition, what the free case does, is provide a non-conductive barrier between the user of the device and the antenna of the phone, very similar to Consumer Reports “duct tape solution” only nicer.

In my opinion this is clearly  a design flaw, too big to recall at this stage and the fact that it has been highlighted to such an extent only shines more light on a glaring weakness.  What I didn’t like about the way Steve Jobs made his case is to indicate that the other smartphones in the industry have a similar design issue – c’mon don’t bring the BlackBerry Bold into this discussion, deal with the key issue at hand – the iPhone antenna!

My prediction is that Apple will come out with a major software update for the iPhone 4 that will alleviate or reduce the signal attenuation problems currently being experienced before September 30 – they have to come up with a better solution.  Let’s see how this saga unfolds.

Of course we will be in a prime position – myCELLmyTERMS – to see if this issue affects the number of iPhone 4 proposals we see in the upcoming months and we will keep you posted.