When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4 in June, it was first available in black with the promise of a white version to follow in July. That ship date got pushed off until “later this year,” according to Apple. The company said, “White models of Apple’s new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected.”
Reuters now reports that Apple has pushed the availability date for the white iPhone 4 out to spring of 2011. An Apple spokesperson didn’t give a reason for the delay, but simply said, “We’re sorry to disappoint customers waiting for the white iPhone again.”
A couple weeks ago, UK tech website Pocket-Lint spotted someone with a white iPhone in New York. The phone’s owner mentioned a friend at Apple “fixed him up” with a white iPhone and that, according to Pocket-Lint, “Apple is having trouble getting its two suppliers in the Far East to match the white used in the manufacturing of the parts. The white home button colour doesn’t match the white front face plate colour, it turns out.”
That’s somewhat plausible, although taking almost an entire year to match button and faceplate colors seems a bit odd. Another report posits that the screen’s backlight may be “leaking out around the edges of the glass and seeping through the back of the white phone.”
Whatever the case, if you’ve been waiting for a white iPhone 4, it looks like your wait is unfortunately going to last quite a bit longer. Boy Genius Report even claims that Apple may have killed off the white iPhone internally already, saying that the company might simply announce another delay in the spring before debuting a new iPhone model in the summer.
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