Engadget and Loop Insight are reporting that Apple will be holding a press conference this Friday (3AM AEDST Saturday 17 July).
Apple on Wednesday invited select press to a special press conference to be held this Friday in California. Apple would only say that the press conference would be regarding the iPhone 4. The topic of discussion, of course, is the iPhone 4 which has received much press over the past few weeks regarding a signal loss issue when it is held in certain ways. A Consumer Reports article reignited discussion.
The possibility that Apple's new iPhone could have a faulty antenna has fueled speculation that the popular phone could be recalled, and one analyst has pegged the potential cost at US$1.5 billion ($1.7 billion). It is likely that this conference will result in a delay for the iPhone 4 release in Australia. When Apple's shares slid nearly 5 per cent on Tuesday, Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi issued a report saying that although a "full product recall of the iPhone 4 would be highly unlikely," the occurrence would end up costing Apple a whopping US$1.5 billion. We'll be providing live coverage here Saturday morning.
TUAW: It took some doing, but the iPhone 4 has been unlocked. Unfortunately, you can't get your hands on what you'll need to do it yourself just yet.
A member of the iPhone Dev Team who goes by PlanetBeing has posted a picture of an iPhone 4 on Canada's Bell network. The feat was made more difficult with the iPhone 4 because iOS 4 on AT&T needed a soup-to-nuts rewrite of ultrasn0w.
We don't have a timeline for when the updated ultrasn0w and Spirit will be released, so we'll keep our ears pressed to the ground on that one.
For now, at least one iPhone 4 is flying free in Canada! Spread your wings, little iPhone, and keep those Canadians away from your lower left-hand corner.
So you've got an iPhone and love the way it looks, so streamline and smooth... then you decide to buy an iPhone case or cover on eBay and ruin the whole look and feel.
For all those people who care about maintaining an image iThreadz offers a range of classy decals to dress up your iPhone. Get rid of that clunky boring iPhone cover and start styl'n it up with iThreadz.
We're giving away several iThreadz to our Twitter followers - simply follow us and mention @AusiPhoneiPad! We'll announce the winners by Friday night (midnight AEDST) and ship them to you pronto!
MacRumors: Cult of Mac spoke with several public relations experts who suggest that a recall of Apple's iPhone 4 is "inevitable" given growing criticism over the device's antenna issues that is spilling over from blog communities into the mainstream media. The PR crisis grew substantially yesterday when the widely-read Consumer Reports review and recommendation magazine failed to recommend the iPhone 4 to potential customers despite the device otherwise topping the rankings of smartphones.
"Apple will be forced to do a recall of this product," said Professor Matthew Seeger, an expert in crisis communication. "It's critically important. The brand image is the most important thing Apple has. This is potentially devastating."
Crisis communication experts contacted by CultofMac.com, including Chris Lehane, former Clinton White House "Master of Disaster," agree: the iPhone 4 reception issue presents a Toyota-style PR crisis for Apple, and the company must respond with a more meaningful fix than a software patch.
Apple issued a press release earlier this month claiming that the problem is merely a software issue that causes the onscreen signal strength display to overstate the actual signal strength, also noting that some attenuation of signal while the device is being held is normal. But Consumer Reports and others have determined through their own testing that the iPhone 4 does in fact suffer more significant signal attenuation than other devices, an issue that would not be remedied by a simple software fix to signal strength displays.
Apple has consequently been taking criticism for not coming clean about the issue or tackling these reports of demonstrable signal laws head-on. In fact, Apple has been going so far as to delete threads in its support forums pointing to the Consumer Reports article rather than allowing an open discussion of the topic or addressing the claims. Meanwhile, some observers hope that Apple's seemingly extended timeframe for pushing out the promised software update to address the signal strength display issue could indicate that the company is quietly working on more substantial software changes to address the issue in some way if at all possible.
Lifehacker: Want to calculate postage costs or look up a postcode on the go? Australia Post has gone phone-friendly with a mobile version of its web site and an iPhone app for common postal tasks.
According to Australia Post, 80% of visitors accessing its site via a mobile device use an iPhone, so an app seems a reasonable investment. That said, most of the features offered in the free iPhone app also appear on the mobile site, so you should be reasonably covered regardless. As well as postage and postcode lookups, you can also track items sent via Express Post or pay bills.
Update (Thu July 15): Australian consumer watchdog Choice has urged Australians not to buy Apple's latest iPhone until it has been thoroughly tested for faults. Choice spokesman Brad Schmitt advised would-be owners in Australia to wait at least another month.
Consumer Reports has retracted an earlier recommendation to buy the iPhone 4 after testing the device.
When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal. Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4.
They conducted tests in a radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber to confirm the hardware issue.
We reached this conclusion after testing all three of our iPhone 4s (purchased at three separate retailers in the New York area) in the controlled environment of CU's radio frequency (RF) isolation chamber. In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers. We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.
Hit the link below or watch the video to learn more about the testing done.
