Real Reason Why the White iPhone 4 Is Delayed 182
tekgoblin writes "There have been numerous reasons why the White iPhone 4 may be delayed with one reason being the color mismatch between the home button and the body. Well this time there is another reason. A source has told CultofMac that the reason for the delay is a light leakage issue caused by the case being clear. Light from the case leaks into pictures taken by the back and front camera on the white iPhone 4, causing distorted pictures. This problem is non-existent on the black iPhone 4, because of its already black case, so Apple has been looking for a solution to this problem, thus the delay of the White iPhone 4 till spring of next year."
Or could it be... (Score:5, Interesting)
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A further delay will push some of the I-want-white holdouts into buying an iPhone 4 now. Some of those same people will purchase a white one later.
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Not likely. In addition to not qualifying for the subsidy on a later purchase ( 2 years), it's common knowledge that once you go black you'll never go back.
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I can't imagine why anyone would want a white one.
Re:Or could it be... (Score:5, Funny)
>>>I can't imagine why anyone would want a white one.
That's right.
Once she's had black,
she'll never go back.
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there is an overly sensitive mod today, this was clearly a joke....
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So, the next time you buy a car --- I'll decide the color for you. Since color is so unimportant to you. You have a black-and-white TV at the house?
Idiot.
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I once refused to buy a phone because I wanted the plain-black instead of the bright red. Unfortunately the black was discontinued, so I never bought the phone.
Another time I delayed buying a Nintendo Gamecube because I thought the original color was hokey (looked like a toy). Also not many games worth playing. Then they released the black version about a year later, which I liked a lot better, so I decided to buy it.
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Another time I delayed buying a Nintendo Gamecube because I thought the original color was hokey (looked like a toy). Also not many games worth playing. Then they released the black version about a year later, which I liked a lot better, so I decided to buy it.
You know, I truly can't tell if you're serious. You delayed buying a toy because the color made it look...like...a...toy...
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No. He's admitting to a very long established geek bias towards black hardware.
Black hardware is just so ... black ... and smooth ... and shiny. *ahem*
For a long time, we had beige, in a matte finish no less; IBM is well documented to be at fault here. We had so utterly much beige, it was mind-numbing. Beige monitor, beige tower, beige keyboard -- oh, sure, you could mix it up with
Re:Or could it be... (Score:5, Funny)
If there are enough users of this thing to warrant a delay in purchasing simply because they want one that is white versus black, I would never want to associate myself with someone so superficial that a simple fucking color change is this important to their buying decision.
Yeah! How dare people put off making consumer goods purchases based on their personal preferences! Those self-involved fuckers!
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So IOW you're so incredibly codependent that you actually imagine that the choices of others who merely use the same phone you do somehow reflects on you? If so, you're just the kind of knee-jerk simpleton marketers dream of!
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I figured they were waiting for SHAtter to finally be disclosed so they could fix the bootrom, thus making the white iphone 4 invulnerable to jailbreaking. For a time.
Since SHAtter wound up going undisclosed, now they're in a pickle. Either they go around fuzzing the usb ports looking for the SHAtter vulnerability themselves, which is time consuming, and gives no clear indication that they found the exact same vulnerability that pod2g found, or they find a way to bait the iphone devs into tipping their ha
It IS actually white (Score:5, Funny)
You are looking at it wrong.
It's like, how much more white could this be? (Score:3, Funny)
And the answer is none. None more white.
Apologies all around. ;-)
Cheers,
Re:It IS actually white (Score:5, Funny)
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can i have all his stuff then?
The antenna (Score:2, Informative)
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You know, in many ways it is kind of funny.
I have an iPhone4. I'm also in Canada and on the Rogers network.
Yes, "antennagate" is real. My house is far enough away from a tower that I can go from 3 bars to 0 just my lightly touching the magic little corner. So I got a case for it, which mostly mitigated the problem in my house...most of the time though, it was never an issue.
I just went to the US (Southern California) and my iPhone was pratically un-useable, case or not. It was entirely useless as a phon
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I have an iPhone4. I'm also in Canada and on the Rogers network.
...
I just went to the US (Southern California) and my iPhone was pratically un-useable, case or not. It was entirely useless as a phone, and mostly useless for any kind of data use. Basically, the fucker was a giant brick for all intents and purposes, at least as a communications device.
Based on that...I still don't hate my iPhone...but I sure as fuck despise AT&T's shitty service.
As a Rogers customer I'm constantly split between hating them for making me pay through the nose and loving them for having a kick-ass network.
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I just went to the US (Southern California) and my iPhone was pratically un-useable, case or not. It was entirely useless as a phone, and mostly useless for any kind of data use. Basically, the fucker was a giant brick for all intents and purposes, at least as a communications device.
You did take it out of Airplane Mode when you landed, did you not?
Just checking.
Good on ya Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
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True but the fact that they've been unable to fix it for so many months(six+) does not bode well. It doesn't seem to be rocket science.
Re:Good on ya Apple (Score:5, Informative)
HTC rushed the EVO out the door to meet demand, and their early releases had some serious hardware quality problems (light leakage around screen, screen separation, broken housing near power button, display problems, etc.) I'm not making this stuff up. I had to return THREE of my handsets before I got one that was good, and all three of those were Hardware Revision 003. I can't imagine what 001 and 002 were like.
That's the price you pay for being an early adopter.
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I got mine within the first couple days after launch, and I haven't seen any screen issues or display problems, but I haven't been able to have one of the body glove hard cases on it for more than a month without the case breaking on the top-right corner, near the volume and power buttons. The stress on the case always causes it to fail there.
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And what is the common theme here? Those products where from Microsoft's competitors. Obviously you should stop buying inferior products and only buy from Microsoft.
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Or wait until people who bought the black one start to get that little chemical feeling of boredom in the back of their lizard brains and are willing to buy the white one to replace it.
Well sorta (Score:2)
I know you want to pat Apple on the back but let's be fair, Apple set lots of expectations. The first expectation is that Apple said at launch the white one would be available soon after the black one, and it's not. On one hand you have to make sure it's right, on the other hand you, you have the Duke Nukem Forever syndrome. You have to ship or cancel at some point. The second expectation that the iPhone 5, whatever that is, will be announced 3 months after the iPhone 4 white is now due out. April is t
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The real question (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:4, Funny)
So that millions of people can express their unique individuality.
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It's like wearing a fancy watch or paying for a drink with a hundred dollar bill at the bar. Visible signs of wealth trump personality and good looks.
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Only Apple-lovers will know the significance to white vs. non-white. The rest will just assume that the iPhone being white was meant to match the ugly white ear-buds that came with it.
I think a more visible sign of wealth is walking into an office full of suits when one is wearing jeans and a sweater, without anyone thinking it out of place... Which leads right into the idea behind bling: people without wealth are more concerned about their outward appearance than people with wealth. So cheap, shiny things
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I still want to know who "they" are.
Ob. May West (Score:2)
Distorted pictures? (Score:4, Informative)
Um, more like overexposed to hell. The camera basically can't regulate exposure if that's the case.
Re:Distorted pictures? (Score:4, Funny)
Pun intended?
This is news? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
If it was a story on the introduction of a new color, I'd agree with you. But this is interesting to those of us who develop products because of the tech issues involved.
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I work at a university where its Industrial Design program is a pretty big deal, but it's plagued with projects that completely fail in usability (ie, a brushed metal and fogged glass "chair" that will explode into twisted shrapnel if more than 20lbs of load is applied). Strangely, the completely nonfunctional pieces tend to be awarded higher grades because they're more "daring" or have more "vision".
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It's interesting in that it's one of the cases where pursuit of an aesthetic has undermined functionality.
I don't think that's quite how I'd put it. They haven't chose to ship with the flaws, so I don't think that's undermining anything. It's just R&D that has (so far) failed to come up with a viable product.
Just admit it already (Score:2, Interesting)
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Even better, just pull the white option totally, and focus more efforts on the next generation of device.
Let the iPhone 5 have two colors.
Not good enough. (Score:3, Interesting)
This 'story' smacks of hooey. An entire crock's worth, you might say. Opacity of plastic is not determined by its hue, to my knowledge. I think it has more to do with other performance faults they want to fix before delivering a 'new' product. Or perhaps sales of the previous white iPhones were stellar enough for them to care about doing it again.
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I agree. I find it hard to believe it took Apple this long to notice and then address supposed issues with light leakage. I'm having trouble even seeing how this would even ever be a problem.
Perhaps they decided they were going to try to address the broken glass issue, among others, before they release the white version. It would be rather stupid to go ahead and release alternate color knowing it's got all the problems plaguing the black version.
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I find it hard to believe it took Apple this long to notice and then address supposed issues with light leakage.
Considering that they failed to notice (at least, enough to do anything about it) the antenna problems on the iPhone 4 until after general release, I have no problem at all believing that Apple has serious problems, in general, identifying functional problems produced by styling decisions (perhaps, because they don't do sufficient real world testing with "production" styling, considering functionality and visual styling separate issues.)
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Bingo. And I can guess the dynamic: Jobs wants things to look a certain way, and pushes the engineers hard. This produces some great designs, but occasional fails when Jobs overrode the warnings he got. Thus the beautiful Cube case that tended to grow cracks, the notorious round mouse, the iPhone 4 antenna, and maybe a few more.
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Eeww... (Score:2)
I find it hard to believe it took Apple this long to notice and then address supposed issues with light leakage
I thought "light leakage" was a side effect of Alli? [wikipedia.org]
This explains how Steve Jobs lost all that weight...
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Not to mention, what kind of idiot engineer would design a camera that relied on the opacity of its case, which to him isn't just a black box, but an as-of-yet-nonexistent box? I don't buy it.
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You did see what they did with the Antenna right? I call it lucky they didn't ship it first.
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I don't make consumer devices, but if I did, and I had a manager over my shoulder trying to squeeze every penny out of the unit cost, I wouldn't tell my mechanical engineer to design me an internal light shield for the CCD, just in case the product's outer case lets in a little light. I'd tell my mechanical engineer to incorporate suitable shielding into the outer case.
Then a year later when management decides to develop a white version, but they aren't interested in paying for new tooling or adding more p
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If the base polymer is essentially translucent, and the same element used to color it is also used to make it opaque, its quite likely that what is used to color it (which will be different based on the desired target color) will also affect the opacity. And, of course, if different base polymers are used for different case colors, that can also affect translucency.
Without
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You'd have a point if it was plastic. But it's glass.
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Given the same resins and concentration of colorant, the black one will transmit less light than the white one, because it will absorb more of the light entering the surface and convert it to heat rather than bouncing it from atom to atom.
What smacks of hooey is that the solution to this problem is simply to put a rubber o-ring of appropriate thickness around each camera to duct it to the phone's surface. Which I'm surprised they don't do with the black one to reduce the chance of dust contamination over t
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Afaict most plastics in thier natural state (no pigments or dyes added) tend to be translucent.
Black plastics are black because they have a pigment in them that absorbs lots of light (carbon black is a common one though not the only one). Once light is absorbed it's not going any further though the plastic.
White plastics are white becase they have a pigment in them that scatters light. As that light is scattered a lot of it comes straight back out but some continues to bounce arround in the plastic potentia
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Love how everyone here is a fucking engineering expert.
Incorrect (Score:2)
I develop switch products for the automated test industry. One of our products, developed several years ago, uses solid-state relays (SSRs) to implement a matrix. The first batch of SSRs we got for R&D use had a white overmolded body.
During development the original developer had problems with relays intermittently operating on their own (i.e. without the digital control system driving them). We correlated it to tests performed when the module was in its chassis versus on an extender card operating ou
Gorilla glass (Score:5, Informative)
Specifically, it's gorilla glass, which is scientifically proven to be harder than regular glass, but let's not get in the way of a good anti-iPhone rant.
Yes you are correct it is not plastic. Just wanted to help you line up all the facts so you didn't have to stop railing annoyingly against the target of your anger.
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Just out of curiosity does that it is made from harder glass mean it's not made from fragile, brittle glass?
Or that white glass is fairly translucent?
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With many substances, an increase in hardness (harder to scratch) is correlated with a decrease in toughness (shatters more easily when stressed).
I wonder if that's true for gorilla glass?
Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)
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The funniest comment for the day
Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Put a mirror finish/coating the inside of the white glass. This will block light and create an epic glow (enhance the whiteness) that apple fanboys can pray to.
I'd totally buy that! (Score:3, Funny)
If you could get the apple logo to glow on the back like that MacBooks do, I'd totally buy that.
And maybe pray to it occasionally.
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I'm thinking they are balancing "green" solutions with requirements. Titanium dioxide paint is quite opaque. But not necessarily a) cheap and b) "green".
Your idea may have the same downside.
White noise (Score:4, Funny)
The press don't get it, do they? The reason is that so many people are already complaining about iPhone 4's signal issue, that the white version is only going to make it worse by introducing white noise.
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The pigment used in most white glass is titanium dioxide... The same pigment is known to reduce radio signals in a room when used in paint. So you may actually not be that far off.
electrical tape? (Score:2)
Hm. A little slice of electrical tape somewhere inside ... problem solved.
Same reason as last time (Score:4, Funny)
Solution (Score:2)
The case can be an LCD and when the camera is activated it turns opaque. QED
Mr. Jobs: You can credit my PayPal account directly. I know you're rich but I still don't accept personal checks.
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Unless you had that patented before you posted, it's just considered prior art now and free for anybody to use.
It definitely has nothing to do with marketing (Score:2)
Clear case ? Pshaw! (Score:2)
runs on and on and on... (Score:2)
"This problem is non-existent on the Black iPhone 4 because of its already black case so Apple has been looking for a solution to this problem thus the delay of the White iPhone 4 till spring of next year."
Have some more sugar, why don't you!
(read it in Pillsie's voice [youtube.com] for bonus points)
Kanye West (Score:2, Funny)
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That's not an analogy.
You fail to live up to your Reddit namesake.
Re:Another theory making the rounds (Score:5, Funny)
a theory is like an analogy which is like a metaphor
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I thought it was like a simile.
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well, a simile is like a metaphor.
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That's not an analogy. You fail to live up to your Reddit namesake.
That's a different guy.
Er, yes. Given that namesake means "a person with the same name as another", that *should* be the case anyway. :-)
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Me thinks he doth protest too much.
Re:Another theory making the rounds (Score:5, Funny)
Not being interested in a device at all and not being interested in it if it doesn't include oral sex are very different things.
Re:Another theory making the rounds (Score:5, Insightful)
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I've never understood the correlation between having a model next to anything, say a smartphone.
...
I know it's supposed to incite buying the object, but I don't see any link.
Some research which might be illuminating:
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Not being interested in a device at all and not being interested in it if it doesn't include oral sex are very different things.
Now there's an interesting research topic, are people who buy iPhones more or less sexually active than the average or do they simply WISH they were?
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http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/ [okcupid.com]
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And almost not surprisingly, someone has actually researched that...
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/iphone-users-have-more-sex/ [nytimes.com]
Re:Another theory making the rounds (Score:4, Funny)
So that's why Heidi Klum retired.
By the time the White iPhone comes out, the only person left on VS's payroll will be Gilbert Gottfried.
Re:Another theory making the rounds (Score:4, Funny)
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Maybe they're trying to match the color of the invisible pink unicorn.
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What the happy fuck are you rambling about, ac?
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I don't think you understand ... the white iPhones are for the Victoria's Secret models. Nobody cares what you want. ;-)
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