Apple Inc. will be holding a press conference this Friday at 1PM ET in Cupertino at its headquarters to address the iPhone 4. Calls and e-mails from Apple PR to various news outlets began last night around 8PM ET.
Before the July 4th holiday weekend Consumer Reports issued a report stating that the reception issues suffered by many owners of the latest iPhone were not “unique” and that it shouldn’t hinder anyone from purchasing it. Further testing by Consumer Reports’ engineers revealed what we already knew, the iPhone 4 does, indeed, have a major hardware flaw that cannot be remedied with a software fix. Prior to this report, Apple issued an open letter stating that a software patch would be forthcoming to fix a 2-year-old bug that was displaying signal strength incorrectly. Our particular review unit did not suffer any reception issues.
(More on Techland: Jobs Knew About iPhone 4 Reception Issues, Says Apple Engineer)
This past Monday, so-called experts in “crisis communications” proclaimed a recall would be inevitable and would cost the company $1.5 billion or 3.5 percent of its cash on hand. While a recall ala Toyota isn’t out of the question, the chances of it happening are quite slim. Many are speculating that Steve Jobs will announce that free Bumper cases, which retail for $29 will be issued to all for free. Estimates say that would only cost the company $1 per unit sold.
We’ll be on hand with a live report.
(More on Techland: How To Fix iPhone 4 Reception Issues With Scotch Tape)