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How the white i Phone 4 may have accidentally paved the way for Apple’s next big i Phone shakeup
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The i Phone 4S (pictured) was delayed until October because of the i Phone 4 (Image credit: Future)
These days, Apple fans are pretty used to delays. Secret projects like Apple’s self-driving car were pushed back again and again until they were eventually scrapped, while the Air Power charger was teased on-stage before Apple threw in the towel. And don’t even get me started on the perpetually late Siri overhaul.
Apple is no stranger to overdue products, then, and the company had its fair share of them even during the halcyon days of Steve Jobs’ leadership. One example was the white version of the i Phone 4, which finally launched 15 years ago today — a full 10 months after the black edition arrived.
But aside from being a near-terminally delayed device, I have a theory that this product’s long and troubled history led to the i Phone launch cycle that we have today. And interestingly enough, it’s a cycle that could be on the brink of changing all over again.
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Apple unveiled the i Phone 4 on June 7, 2010, with preorders beginning on June 15. Yet by June 24, it was clear that something was amiss. Apple provided a statement declaring that the white edition was proving to be more “challenging to manufacture” than it had expected. The launch was delayed to the latter half of July — a date that looks wildly optimistic in hindsight.
In the end, the white i Phone 4 wouldn’t arrive until April 28, 2011 — 10 months and three weeks after the June 7 announcement.
So, what caused two versions of the same phone to be launched nearly a full year apart? After all, didn’t Apple just need to manufacture the i Phone 4 in a new color and leave it at that?
Well, not quite. You see, Apple itself was pretty confident during development that the white i Phone 4 would be essentially identical to the black one, just with a different colorway adorning its chassis. Speaking in April 2011, Apple’s marketing chief Phil Schiller said, “We thought we were there a year ago, or less than that, when we launched the i Phone 4, and we weren’t.” Describing the process as “challenging,” Apple was evidently as surprised as everyone else.
The problem lay in the phone’s camera, specifically how the camera reacted to the white chassis. Photos taken on the device tended to come out blurry, especially if the built-in flash was used. That’s something that wasn’t happening with the black version.
As it turns out, the fault lay in the i Phone’s proximity sensor, which became confused by the phone’s white shell. When the flash was used, it overwhelmed the proximity sensor, which prevented the i Phone from being able to accurately gauge the subject’s distance from the phone — hence the blurry images.
This issue wasn’t present in previous i Phones because they lacked a built-in flash, and they were absent from the black i Phone 4 because its darker case didn’t have the same effect. It might have been a problem with the silver i Pad 2 that was released around the same time, but it too lacked a flash.
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Somehow, all of this escaped Apple’s usually rigorous testing process. Under Steve Jobs, the company was known for its intense attention to detail and maniacal dedication to quality. So how on earth did it miss something as significant as this?
That’s what we don’t know. But 15 years ago, it was a large enough problem for Apple to push back the white i Phone 4 for close to 11 months. And that had a knock-on effect further down the line.
For one reason or another, Apple decided to drive on and fix the white i Phone 4 instead of consigning it to the scrap heap. But that presented another problem: its much-delayed release date.
At the time, Apple launched new i Phones in the summer. The i Phone 4 arrived in June, and every previous i Phone was unveiled in either June or July.
But with the white i Phone 4 finally stepping into the limelight in April 2011, that left just two months until the world would be presented with the i Phone 4S. That was a sizeable problem for Apple, as it risked both the white i Phone 4 and the i Phone 4S cannibalizing each other’s sales. Customers, too, could be confused by the close arrivals of the two products.
What did Apple decide to do? Delay the i Phone all over again. The i Phone 4S was pushed back from its summer launch window to October 2011 to create some breathing room. That helped forge enough of a gap to prevent the two i Phones from stepping on each other’s toes.
The next year, Apple presented the i Phone 5 to the world in September, and the company has stuck with the virtually unchanged September timeframe ever since. While Apple has never come out and said it, I suspect that, if it weren’t for the white i Phone 4 and its problematic development history, we could still be seeing new i Phones in the summer.
Yet as we mark the 15th anniversary of this turn of events, we might be on the cusp of another major i Phone launch shake-up. If the rumors are to be believed, Apple is going to divide the launch of the i Phone 18 range into two parts.
That could see the i Phone 18 Pro, i Phone 18 Pro Max, and foldable i Phone Ultra take to the stage in fall 2026. The i Phone 18, i Phone 18e, and possibly even the i Phone Air 2, however, are mooted to be held back for spring 2027, meaning you’ll have to wait longer for the more affordable end of the roster.
As far as anyone can tell, Apple’s hand hasn’t been forced by a troubled manufacturing process, so the reason for its decision is somewhat unclear. But it’s fascinating to me that the potential legacy of the white i Phone 4 — those September release events — could finally be giving way to a new schedule a decade and a half after Apple’s botched launch.
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Alex Blake has been fooling around with computers since the early 1990s, and since that time he's learned a thing or two about tech. No more than two things, though. That's all his brain can hold. As well as Tech Radar, Alex writes for i More, Digital Trends and Creative Bloq, among others. He was previously commissioning editor at Mac Format magazine. That means he mostly covers the world of Apple and its latest products, but also Windows, computer peripherals, mobile apps, and much more beyond. When not writing, you can find him hiking the English countryside and gaming on his PC.
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