Despite hours of server-related headaches, Apple managed to process so many iPhone 4 pre-orders on June 15 that the ship date for new orders has been pushed out from June 24 to July 2. Customers that completed the pre-order process on the 15th will still receive their new iPhone on the 24th.
Apple began accepting pre-order sales for the newest iPhone model early Tuesday morning, but later took its Web-based store and ordering system offline when customers couldn’t complete the process thanks to what appeared to be overloaded AT&T servers.
Once Apple’s Web-based store came back online, customers were still faced with stalls when the pre-order process attempted to verify their AT&T account information. Thanks to Apple’s new Apple Store app for the iPhone, however, many customers were able to successfully reserve an iPhone for pickup at their local Apple retail store.
Apple introduced the iPhone 4 during Steve Jobs’s keynote presentation at the company’s World Wide Developer Conference on June 7 with the promise that the company would begin accepting pre-orders on the 15th for the June 24 release.
The new iPhone sports a redesigned form factor that’s almost 25 percent thinner than the iPhone 3GS, a higher resolution multi-touch display, a 5 megapixel camera capable of capturing 720p HD video, an LED flash, a front-facing camera for video calls, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a built-in gyroscope and digital compass, Apple’s A4 processor, and more.
While Apple will be offering the iPhone 4 in black or white, currently only the black model is available. Apple isn’t saying when the white version will ship.
The 16GB iPhone 4 is priced at US$199, and the 32GB model costs $299.