White iPhone, is that really you?
White iPhone holdouts could soon be rewarded for their patience. The long-lost model may have finally emerged from its nine-month nap.
White iPhone 4 handsets could soon go on sale at Best Buy, according to one new report.
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When we last visited the saga of the White iPhone 4, the ever-elusive device had been once again delayed by Apple brass. (You'll recall that Steve Jobs, in unveiling the iPhone 4 in 2010, promised the imminent release of a white model. Only the black model ever showed up.) But hold fast, white iPhone stalwarts! Salvation may be on the way.
Engadget has published a pair of photos – one from a Best Buy outlet and the other from the Canadian retail giant The Source – which appear to show the White iPhone 4 is ready for release. The first photo was snapped at a Best Buy in Houston, and includes a price tag for a "white iPhone 4," powered by AT&T, and available off-contract for $599. (As Engadget notes, that's the same price as an off-contract black iPhone 4.)
The second photo, which was apparently taken in a Source store in Canada, depicts similar tags for two White iPhone 4s, one with a 16GB capacity, and the other with a 32GB drive. So, yes, unless a) these photos are fakes or b) the staffs of both stores have really messed up, there's a good chance that a White iPhone is likely to show up sometime soon.
Last July, not long after the official launch of the iPhone 4, Apple issued a statement blaming the white handset delay on manufacturing problems.
"White models of Apple's new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year," Apple reps wrote. "The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected." At the time, Apple was still predicting that a white iPhone 4 would hit by the end of 2010.
That forecast was eventually changed to the spring of this year. It's worth noting that AT&T has a bit of a record of racking up incredible backorders on popular products, from the original iPhone 4 to the white iPhone. Verizon, on the other hand, has told its employees to wait on the iPhone 4, in order to keep the handsets available for regular customers.