A semi-official confirmation has appeared today concerning an alleged iPhone 4 revision supposed to fix the nasty antenna issue, better known in the headlines as Antennagate. The bomb was dropped by a high-ranked carrier executive who publicly promised his company would have an improved handset on sale by the end of September.
Mexican carrier Telcel announced the arrival of iPhone 4 to the country this past Friday and their director of value added services Marco Quatorze told Spanish-language site CanalMX that Telcel, which is the biggest carrier in Mexico, will at first sell the existing iPhone 4 version offered elsewhere, the one with the known antenna deficiency.
A bit later, beginning on September 30th, Telcel will carry “a new device” without the reception malfunction. It’s unclear why the carrier would want to sell the “flawed” iPhone 4 and replace it with a newer model less than a month later. Apparently, those who buy the familiar iPhone 4 model from Friday, September 3 onwards, will be given an option to switch to a revised model, he said.
Read more at CanalMX (original in Spanish, Google translation)
Christian’s Opinion
Take this information with a grain of salt because it’s based on Google’s translation of the original article and we don’t know whether Quatorze acted on the rumors or if he relayed the actual insider information. Speaking of which, September 30 chimes in with the expiration of Apple’s free bumpers program that Jobs announced at the iPhone 4 presser.
Apple’s boss told the gathered media that the offer will be valid for every iPhone 4 purchased through September 30, adding this:
We’ll re-examine this in September and decide whether to keep going or maybe we’ll have a better idea.
It would appear Apple already had a better solution in mind back then. Otherwise, Jobs would have never dropped a casual hint of a “better idea.”
Mexican carrier claims new iPhone 4 for October
Apple could still be planning a hardware replacement program for the iPhone 4 according to new rumours that have surfaced in Mexico.
At the Q&A of the Apple Antennagate press conference, Steve Jobs detailed how the company would be giving away a free bumper to everyone that has bought or buys an iPhone 4, up until 30 September, and that when questioned later said that Apple would “re-examine this in September and decide whether to keep going, or maybe we will have a better idea”.
Well fast forward a couple of months and CanalMX, a Mexican based tech site, is quoting an executive at Mexican carrier Telcel as telling them that Apple will release a revised version of the iPhone 4 by the end of September to address the highly-publicized antenna issue.
According to Marco Quatorze – Telcel’s director of Value Added Services – through the wonders of Google Translation, the iPhone 4 sold currently in Mexico will at first be the same hardware as that sold in the US as you would expect. However Quatorze then, according to the site, detailed that a new device that does not have the “malfunction of the reception” would be introduced.
Whether or not Quatorze would be privy to such information is unsure, or it might be that Google’s translation tool has led to a misunderstanding of the report, however as we questioned back at the Antennagate press conference, you have to wonder why the 30 September date as been set and why Steve Jobs, the company’s CEO, was so evasive in answering the question at the time.
And you thought those Apple Antennagate stories where over and done with.
