Apple today released iPhone 4 in the US, France, Germany, Japan and the UK.
The launch was met with long queues across most retail stores, along with free coffee and breakfast at many.
We were positioned outside Bath's Apple Store (SouthGate) from 7am, when the store opened for people with reservations. We were warned immediately that Vodafone had not provided the store with any microSIMs, and therefore only Orange, o2 and three activations were possible. Armed with free coffee and breakfast provided by Apple and Starbucks, the whole process only took about 20 minutes after the doors were opened and our phone was ready to go.
By lunchtime however, stocks were dwindling, with all the UK phone carriers stores sold out and only a couple of handsets left at the Apple Store.
The process hasn't been easy for everyone in the UK, though. Most Orange and Vodafone retail stores only received a couple of dozen handsets in the best cases, and the long queues often ended with many people disappointed. Online shoppers were met with similar issues with online stores struggling to cope with demand, and stock supplies depleted within the first hour of opening.
As with most Apple product launches however, various sites and blogs across the internet have reported issues with the initial batch of iPhone 4s:
Yellow spots beneath retina display
News broke late on Wednesday that some users were experiencing yellow spots underneath their iPhone 4's retina display, but Engadget report this issue is actually due to the speed that Apple (and their manufacturing partners) have been producing the devices, and the discolouration is caused by the bonding agent between the layers of glass not evaporating fully - an issue which should go away within a couple of days of use.
Left handed signal degradation
There are numerous youtube videos demonstrating that should you hold your iPhone with your left hand, you can see the signal bars drop significantly, in some cases resulting in "No Signal". While the video evidence is undeniable, we're not able to reproduce the issue with our iPhone 4.