iPhone 4

Rumors have surfaced online that Apple and its partner AT&T Wireless have ceased to offer the iPhone 4 without a two-year service contract. Speculation on the issue has blamed the policy change on everything from an impending Verizon iPhone to AT&T greed. These reports would be informative except for one thing, the rumor is not true.

Both AT&T and Apple offer the iPhone 4 without a contract at no-commitment pricing. However, these deals are not available online. AT&T representatives have verified that the iPhone 4 can be purchased without a contract in person, from either an AT&T Wireless retail store or an Apple Store. To have an iPhone purchased online and shipped to your residence or place of business, a two-year contract is required.

Overwhelming demand for the iPhone 4 took down Korea Telecom (KT) servers during the launch of pre-ordering and resulted in 130,000 units sold in just 13 hours. The device will ship and hit shelves at 2,900 KT stores nationwide in September. Pre-ordering began at 6:00 AM local time, with the first 100k units sold by the end of lunch hour.

In contrast, the iPhone 3GS sold 60,000 units over five days in South Korea when it launched in December 2009. KT is the second largest wireless provider in the country, and although the company increased its web server capacity they did not expect demand to be so strong. Web ordering went down intermittently throughout the day, with traffic swamping the available bandwidth. AT&T and Apple had similar issues with pre-ordering in the US this June.

Those of you waiting for an iPhone 4 unlock solution can now jailbreak your iPhones and get to unlocking with the latest version of ultrasn0w on Cydia. Owners of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G can all set up their devices with ultrasn0w version 1.0-1 to operate on carriers other than AT&T.

Apple sells unlocked iPhones in several countries, however in the US the iPhone is locked to AT&T thanks to an exclusive contract between Apple and the carrier. AT&T charges subscribers for international roaming, with the highest price attached to data plans overseas.

Despite ongoing manufacturing and inventory problems, Apple is forging ahead with its global rollout of the iPhone 4. Friday July 30 will see the introduction of iPhone 4 smart phones in 17 additional markets. Apple first launched the iPhone 4 on June 24 in the US, with cellular service exclusively provided by AT&T Wireless.

Over three million iPhone 4 units have already been sold. Apple recently announced it was not making the white iPhone 4 model available until later in 2010 due to manufacturing difficulties. The white version was previously expected to hit shelves at the end of July. The next batch of countries slated to receive the iPhone 4 include the following:

Apple fans are still waiting for a white iPhone 4 release date as Apple claims to have encountered manufacturing difficulties. The device was delayed twice, even after Steve Jobs announced white iPhone 4 availability would come by the end of this month. It could be that the press conference about the iPhone 4 antenna has more to do with the white iPhone delay than the painting process.

Apple is offering iPhone 4 owners a free case to alleviate antenna reception problems until September 30. Speculation is now rampant that the company will use this time and the already long white iPhone 4 delay to implement improvements to the antenna design. A change would make it unnecessary to offer free iPhone cases to owners of the white model, especially if the white iPhone 4 release is delayed until October 1st.