iPhone 4 Owner? Apple Will Give You A Free Bumper

 

Apple and Steve Jobs today announced that they will give out a Bumper case to any iPhone 4 owner. If you purchased a bumper case you will get your money back and of course you will get to keep your Bumper case. Apple is doing this in order to keep their customers happy while they experience signal issue due to the iPhone 4's antenna.  Currently you cannot purchase the Bumper cases on Apple's online store, instead you will see a note saying "Apple will offer a free iPhone 4 Bumper or other select cases to iPhone 4 customers." More details on how to order you free Bumper case will be up on Apple.com next week. You can already try getting your money back right now if you have purchased a Bumper case. It's safe to say that there have been reports of iPhone 4 users who have never had any signal issues. Apple said that they cannot guaranty that everyone will be able to get a free Bumper but instead they will offer other select cases.

Source Apple Press Conference 

Apple Posts July 16 Press Conference Video

Apple recently posted today's July 16 press conference talking about the iPhone 4's antenna. You can stream or download the video on Apple's page.

Source Apple

Apple Offers Free Cases!

 

Today, at Apple's press conference about the iPhone 4 antenna problem, Steve Jobs explained everything that was wrong with the iPhone 4.

Steve began the keynote by saying that their phones aren't perfect. But then continued saying that the iPhone 4 was the biggest phone launch ever and that the iPhone 4 has the highest customer satisfaction rating of any any smartphone.

 

Then Steve went on to show some pictures of other smartphones dropping bars and saying that the problem occurs in all phones.

 

Then there stats about the complaints. Apparently, 0.55% of customers have complained about the antenna problem and that in the same time period, the iPhone 4 had has a 1/3 less returns than what the 3GS had in the same amount of time. Also, the iPhone 4 drops less than one additional call per 100 than the 3GS and that "the problem of affects a small percentage of our users."

 

So what is apple going to do about it? Well firstly they are going to offer free bumpers to all iPhone 4 customers and a refund if you already bought a bumper. They also said, as they can't make enough bumpers, they will also offer free third-party cases. This will run until the September 30th. Next, they are going to give a full refund to all unsatisfactory customers and a contract refund as well. All you need to do is return an undamaged iPhone 4 within 30 days of purchase.

 

In other Apple news, the white iPhone 4 will be available at the end of July, along with Canada and 16 other countries getting the iPhone 4 (See them here). Also that the proximity sensor problem will be fixed by a software update.

Source Engadget

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iPhone 4 And It's Issues (Parody)

We all know by now that the iPhone 4 does indeed suffer from reception issues and such, but this parody should sum it all up for you whilst getting a good laugh. *NSFW - contains strong language.

Source Hoggworks Studios

Apple Press Conference Is A Go This Friday

Apple will hold a press conference this Friday, most likely about the iPhone 4's antenna issues. The press conference will start at 10AM PST sharp, Friday the 16th. We will finally know what really is going on, and Engadget will be there to cover it live. 

Source Engadget

iOS 4.1 Available to Developers

 

After only 3 weeks after launch, iOS4 is getting its the first major update. Many people thought it would be 4.0.1 to fix the antenna problems with the iPhone 4, but Apple have jumped all the way to 4.1.

It seems like there is a developer preview of Game Center but no iPad support in 4.1. However, there seems to be nothing too major like fixing the antenna problem on the iPhone 4, which could mean that it is a hardware problem.

Stay tuned to find out more as we know it.

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Update on 2010-07-14 22:05 by Patrick Rigby

 

There is the increased bar size as promised by Apple which makes one bar look really good and presumably the formula to calculate the signal strength has been revised. Also, the Game Center is here.

Source BGR

Update on 2010-07-14 22:33 by Patrick Rigby

 

There is a whole new interface for Game center. It is a lot more vibrant and colourful than the older version. Hopefully because of this Game Center update, we will see a lot more games using this iOS4 feature.

Source MobileCrunch

Update on 2010-07-15 19:13 by Patrick Rigby

After the iOS 4.1 developer beta being released yesterday, Apple has just released iOS 4.0.1 to the masses. The update which has the signal strength fix for the iPhone 3G and later.

Just plug your iPhone into iTunes and download the update.

Apple Making Google Maps Competitor?

This could be a possibilty as Apple just bought the Canadian mapping company Poly9. Poly9 makes several products but the most interesting is Poly9 Globe, which is a browser based, 3D globe which can be used on all Platforms. The interactive software allows 3D rendering of the Earth in the 3 axis. 

Poly9 was apparently purchased "recently" by Apple, but there hasn't been any official confirmation of the purchase. It was also said that Apple asked Poly9 employees to not discuss the matter. But if it is true, the purchase of Poly9 would be the second mapping related purchase for Apple. Last year, it was revealed that the company had purchased Placebase, a direct Google Maps competitor. 

Because of these purchases, some people have wondered that Apple is going to create its own mapping service on its mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad which would replace the current Google Maps on its iOS devices.

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Source AppleInsider | Gizmodo