The latest lines and frenzy for the iPhone 4 have analysts buzzing. Some predict that over 1 million iPhone 4 smartphones will be sold today. There have also been problems with the screen that should be cured over time.
Some iPhone 4 newbies reported the iPhone 4 that has gotten rave reviews looses signal
strength when you touch the lower-left corner of its external antenna
band which some contend is software issue.
Update 7/6/10: Apple has issued a statement, saying it is stunned at the problems and admits that the bar signals shown on the screen are not accurate. They will issue a software update to fix that glitch. Most phones have signal loss with hands covering some part of the phone you can view several videos that show
signal attenuation, we posted after the death grip revelation. Internal Apple documents revealed how to Apple Care associates should deal with the problem.
As of 11:00 am this morning, CNET reported that while stores in New York and San Francisco were still making sales, other stores are already out of stock. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reported today, that he had called 20 Apple stores in the morning and found nine already out of iPhone 4. AT&T is not selling an iPhone 4 to non-pre-orders, until June 29.
Some don’t like that some of iPhone 4’s display has a yellow
discoloration. An Apple Insider forum member contends that the yellow
is from a glue used for screen and will dissappear over time.
“Apple is using a bonding agent called Organofunctional Silane Z-6011
to bond the layers of glass. Apparently, Apple (or more likely Foxconn)
is shipping these products so quickly that the evaporation process is
not complete. However, after one or two days of use, especially with the
screen on, will complete the evaporation process and the yellow
“blotches” will disappear.”
The member was instrumental in the use of the material.
People who want to buy the white version of the iPhone 4 have to wait three weeks.
iSuppli is going to tear down the iPhone 4 and send out some observations.
Update 7/06/10: iSuppli estimated the cost of the iPhone 4 to be $187.
“Apple in the past has always doubled the amount of NAND flash memory in the newest version of its iPhone line,” said Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst, teardown services, for iSuppli. “However, with the iPhone 4, Apple is standing pat at the 32Gbyte level. This shows that the iPhone has reached the point where data-storage memory is no longer one of the most critical features. Instead, the focus has shifted to the UI, with the major innovations of the iPhone 4 occurring in areas including the retina display, as well as the use of gyroscope-based control.”Beyond the enhancements to the A4, the iPhone 4 will include other features designed to support HD. For example, the iPhone 4 likely will double its mobile DRAM content to 4Gbits, up from 2Gbits in the iPhone 3G S. Furthermore, the iPhone 4 will add support for High-Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) to allow the uploading of bandwidth-intensive HD video. HSUPA supports uplink speeds up to 5.76Mbit/sec.
iSuppli expects the iPhone 4 to include a version of the A4 processor seen in the iPad—with some important differences. As in the iPad, the A4 will use an ARM Cortex microprocessor core, and will be manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. using 45nm semiconductor manufacturing process technology. However, the iPhone’s A4 likely will operate at a slower clock speed than the 1GHz frequency in the iPad—most likely at 800MHz. Furthermore, the iPhone’s A4 is likely to add additional accelerator cores for encoding/decoding High-Definition (HD) video, supporting the phone’s HD camera.
The iPhone 4 employs an antenna integrated into the stainless steel enclosure of the phone. Apple actually may have employed a design which isolates portions of the enclosure to, in effect, separate the enclosure into two or three separate antennas in the product in order to improve signal integrity. “Using two or more antennas enables spatial diversity, which can reduce some of the problems previous models of the iPhone have suffered with dropped calls,” said Francis Sideco, principal analyst, wireless communications, for iSuppli.