MacRumors

As announced, Apple has begun selling the white iPhone 4 in Eastern Hemisphere and European countries as those markets roll around to April 28th. The U.S. and Canada should follow suit in just a few hours as clocks tick over to the new day. While the company is advertising availability on the front pages of its sites in countries where the clock has past midnight, online orders do not yet appear to be available, although third-party retail outlets appear to be free to open their doors.

Even prior to the official release, the white iPhone 4 was making its way into the hands of select customers as certain retail stores initiated early sales of the device.

Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller also conducted a telephone interview with All Things Digital earlier today in which they touched on some of the challenges the company faced in bringing the white iPhone 4 market a full ten months behind schedule.

Update: Video of the white iPhone 4 officially going on sale in Hong Kong.

Earlier today, All Things Digital conducted a telephone interview with Steve Jobs and other Apple senior executives, covering the location tracking controversy and white iPhone 4 delays. All Things Digital has now followed with a full, edited transcript of the portion of the interview covering the location tracking issue.

In the full interview, Jobs discusses why it took Apple nearly a week to respond to the issue, noting that the company needed to take the time to investigate the situation and figure out how best to relate the information to the public.

"We're an engineering-driven company," Jobs said in a telephone interview Wednesday. "When people accuse us of things, the first thing we want to do is find out the truth. That took a certain amount of time to track all of these things down. And the accusations were coming day by day. By the time we had figured this all out, it took a few days. Then writing it up and trying to make it intelligible when this is a very high-tech topic took a few days. And here we are less than a week later."

Most of the other points of the interview were covered in the earlier highlight piece, but the full transcript also includes new details about how the location database works and about Apple's views on user control over location services.

When pressed on what services Apple might be developing using location information, Jobs referred only to the potential traffic service disclosed in the official Q&A, declining to expand on that with additional information or possibilities.

iPhone developer FutureTap today noted today that it has received its first crash report from a device running iOS 5.0, suggesting that Apple is testing the operating system with third-party applications.

Just received the first iOS 5.0 crash report. MKUserLocationBreadCrumb sounds interesting.

Future Tap also posted a screenshot of the crash report.

As noted by 9 to 5 Mac, the "MKUserLocationBreadCrumb" API is unsurprisingly related to mapping and location functions, a primary component of FutureTap's Where To? application.

FutureTap and Apple have a bit of an interesting history, with some controversy having arisen last year when an Apple patent application containing a figure that was essentially an uncredited duplication of the Where To? interface surfaced. Apple later clarified that it was not seeking to patent anything related to Where To? and that the figure was for illustrative purposes only, but noted that it would investigate updating the patent application with proper attribution.

In a companion piece to the earlier article highlighting Apple CEO Steve Jobs' interview regarding location tracking issues, All Things Digital turns the spotlight to the white iPhone 4, sharing comments from Jobs and Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller regarding the difficulties in bringing the product to market.

"It was challenging," Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller said during a joint interview with CEO Steve Jobs on Wednesday. "It's not as simple as making something white. There's a lot more that goes into both the material science of it - how it holds up over time... but also in how it all works with the sensors."

Schiller noted that the company thought it had all of the issues in hand when it introduced the iPhone 4 last year, but it obviously took a lot more work than expected to obtain the quality finished product the company demanded.

Jobs reported that the company's experience with the white iPhone 4 has benefited the company in a number of ways, most obviously bringing some of the lessons learned during the development process to other product lines such as the iPad, where the second-generation device shipped in both black and white from day one.

The white iPhone 4 finally goes on sale tomorrow, although some retail outlets around the world have been letting units out to customers early.

Earlier today, Apple officially responded to recent concerns regarding significant amounts of location information being stored on users' iPhone and in system backups, noting that the information is actually a database of nearby Wi-Fi and cellular access points used to provide quick location fixes when needed.

While we noted earlier this week a claimed brief email response from Apple CEO Steve Jobs regarding the issue, he has now spoken more thoroughly about the issue in a new telephone interview with All Things Digital. In the interview, Jobs reiterated many of the same statements made in Apple's official Q&A on the issue, but offers a bit more perspective on things.

Jobs said that the tech industry hasn't done a good job of educating users on what has been a fairly complicated issue.

"As new technology comes into the society there is a period of adjustment and education," Jobs said. "We haven't as an industry done a very good job educating people I think, as to some of the more subtle things going on here. As such (people) jumped to a lot of wrong conclusions in the last week."

Jobs declined to comment on the practices of other companies such as Google that have also been included in the controversy, noting only that Apple intends to participate in discussions with federal legislators and regulatory agencies to reassure them about Apple's practices.

"I think Apple will be testifying," Jobs said. "They have asked us to come and we will honor their request of course."

Jobs also said it will be interesting to see how aggressively the press tracks the issue and looks at what other players in the industry do.

"Some of them don't do what we do," Jobs said. "That's for sure."

Jobs was joined on the call by Apple executives Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall, and All Things Digital will be posting a more thorough recap of the interview shortly.

Italian site iSpazio has been able to get its hands on a white iPhone 4 as several European outlets have begun selling the device ahead of tomorrow's official launch. With the new iPhone in hand, the site has put together a handful of videos [Google translation] testing out a few of the areas of concern users have had with the black models, most notably the proximity sensor performance and signal loss caused by "death grip".

The proximity sensor has been one of the most interesting features given Apple's redesign of the area surrounding the sensor on the front of the device above the earpiece slot. Early white iPhone 4 samples and images showed a grille of small holes, but that design has been replaced in the shipping version with a lozenge-shaped black window covering the sensor. The sensor covering is essentially invisible in the black iPhone 4 given that device's coloration.

According to iSpazio, the white iPhone 4 exhibits excellent proximity sensor performance, responding immediately to turn off the device's display when covered but then also keeping the display off until a finger or head is a "relatively large distance" away. The black iPhone 4s initially exhibited problems with displays coming back on while on phone calls, resulting in unintentional touch input. The issue was largely fixed in an iOS update, but it is reassuring to see that the white models exhibit solid performance from the get-go.

iSpazio also tested the "death grip", attempting to generate signal loss by covering portions of the stainless steel band that serves as the antenna for the device. As with black iPhone 4s equipped with iOS versions released since Apple addressed early issues, the white iPhone 4 exhibits a slight drop in signal strength, but the drop does not appear to have a significant effect on connectivity.

Anecdotally, the site reports that the white iPhone 4 may have slightly better reception than the black model, although it is difficult to say if there is any material difference.

As part of its Q&A regarding location tracking posted earlier today, Apple discloses that it is currently collecting "anonymous traffic data" from users' devices with the aim of providing an "improved traffic experience in the next couple of years".

What other location data is Apple collecting from the iPhone besides crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data?

Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years.

That traffic experience would presumably be built on top of a turn-by-turn navigation system separate from the Maps application included in iOS and driven by Google.

In November 2009, an Apple job posting described an iPhone engineering position that would help take Maps "to the next level". The company followed that up last December, with a set of four job listings seeking iOS engineers with experience in developing navigation software, further fueling speculation that Apple is working on its own navigation system.

On a broader scale, Apple has increasingly looked to beef up its own mapping and geolocation services in an attempt to distance itself from Google, which has provided the core Maps application for the iPhone since the device's 2007 debut. Apple acquired mapping company Placebase in July 2009 and followed that up by purchasing small Canadian mapping firm Poly9 one year later. Apple also moved its location services for iOS in-house with the release of iOS 3.2 on the iPad in April 2010, separating itself from Google and Skyhook Wireless for such services.

Google has offered free turn-by-turn navigation on Android since late 2009 and had hinted at that time that it could bring the service to iOS, although the company later backpedaled from those claims.

Apple today officially acknowledged the growing controversy over the logging of location data on the iPhone and iPad. The document comes in a Q&A format. In it, Apple addresses some common concerns and explicitly states that it is not tracking the location of your iPhone/iPad, has never done so, and has no plans to do so.

Apple goes on to explain the reason for the logging of data:

Why is my iPhone logging my location?
The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, its maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested. Calculating a phones location using just GPS satellite data can take up to several minutes. iPhone can reduce this time to just a few seconds by using Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data to quickly find GPS satellites, and even triangulate its location using just Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data when GPS is not available (such as indoors or in basements). These calculations are performed live on the iPhone using a crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower data that is generated by tens of millions of iPhones sending the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple.

Apple states that all data that is transmitted to Apple is anonymous and encrypted and can not be tied to the identity of the user. The company also notes findings that the database continues to grow despite location services being off is a bug that will soon be addressed.

Apple is planning on releasing a free iOS update in the next few weeks that performs the following:

- reduces the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone,
- ceases backing up this cache, and
- deletes this cache entirely when Location Services is turned off.

Apple officially announced that the white iPhone 4 will arrive on April 28th.

Apple today announced that the white iPhone 4 will be available beginning tomorrow. White iPhone 4 models will be available from Apple's online store (www.apple.com), at Apple's retail stores, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

Internationally, the white iPhone 4 will also be available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and UK.

Apple also announced that the iPad 2 will officially launch in 12 new countries this week:

Apple today announced that iPad 2, the second-generation of its breakthrough post-PC device, will arrive in Japan on Thursday, April 28 and Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and eight additional countries on Friday, April 29. iPad 2 will be available at Apple retail stores at 9 a.m. local time, select Apple Authorized Resellers, and online through the Apple Store (www.apple.com) beginning at 1 a.m. Additionally, iPad 2 with Wi-Fi will be available in China beginning Friday, May 6.

The full list of new countries debuting the iPad 2 on the 29th includes Hong Kong, India, Israel, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Macerkopf.de reports that they have received confirmation from Germany's 3 carriers that the white iPhone will launch there on April 28th, just like Japan. That leaves us wondering if the rest of the world will also need to wait until Thursday. Signs had pointed to today (April 27th) as the launch date for the white iPhone.

It's still a bit early in the day, but there's been no peep from Apple or its U.S. carrier partners about the launch. Typically, Apple's store will go down in order to update. At this point, it seems likely the worldwide launch is indeed April 28th, so one more day of White iPhone 4 anticipation.

Nikkei reports that the iPad 2 will finally debut in Japan on Thursday, April 28th. The launch comes a month later than originally planned due to the earthquake and tsunami that devastated significant parts of the country. The news comes by way of CNNGo:

That veritable font of all knowledge, the Nikkei Shimbun newspaper, says the shiny lust-bauble will hit Japanese stores in stealth mode, more than a month after the scheduled March 25 launch-date.

Beyond the original announcement of delay, Apple has not officially announced the ship date for the iPad 2 in Japan.

This week should be a busy week for Apple as they are believed to be launching the white iPhone 4 to multiple countries on Wednesday.

Update: The White iPhone 4 is apparently also making its way to Japan on the same date, April 28th. A reader sent in this picture taken at a Softbank store, which lists the 4/28 date as the start of sales:

Earlier this year, we pointed to a report from media research firm Nielsen indicating that Apple's iOS was just barely holding off Android in smartphone usage in the United States. But continued strong growth from Android that saw the platform easily leading the pack among the most recent smartphone acquirers left little doubt that Android would quickly pass iOS in total penetration.

New Nielsen data from March but released today shows just that, with Android now taking the overall lead with 37% of the market in the U.S., ahead of iOS which continues to hold steady at 27%. Research in Motion's BlackBerry platform has continued its slide and is now down to 22%.

Just looking at those who acquired smartphones in the six months leading up to the March survey, Android's lead is even stronger with a full 50% of users opting for the platform. Apple polled in second place at 25% while Research in Motion dropped to 15%.

Nielsen also took a look at future buying plans, assessing those consumers planning to purchase a smartphone sometime within the following year from the date of the survey. According to the latest data, Android now edges out iOS, 31% to 30%, a significant change from the July-September 2010 period when iOS held a 33%-26% lead over Android among future smartphone purchasers.

Just over a month ago, Apple filed a trademark lawsuit against Amazon over the company's use of the term "Appstore" for its own Android application marketplace. According to the suit, Apple is seeking an injunction to prevent Amazon from using the name, which Apple believes infringes upon its own "App Store" mark.

GeekWire reports that Amazon has now filed an official response (PDF) to Apple's suit, calling the claim baseless and asserting the generic nature of term.

The Seattle-based online retailer asked a federal judge in San Francisco to throw out Apple's trademark suit, calling the phrase "app store" generic and not something that Apple can claim for its exclusive use. Amazon's filing echoed Microsoft's arguments in a separate dispute at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office opposing Apple's attempt to register the trademark.

Using a similar tactic to that employed by Microsoft in its attempts to have Apple's "App Store" trademark application denied, Amazon has cited comments by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in which he refers to app stores in the generic sense rather than specifically in relation to Apple's marketplace.

Amazon has also filed a counterclaim seeking dismissal of Apple's suit, a declaratory judgment that use of the term "app store" does not infringe upon Apple's trademark rights, and reimbursement of attorney's fees and other costs.

Apple has asked that the courts address the trademark lawsuit on an accelerated timetable in order to head off the rapidly increasing number of entities using "App Store" and related terms, but the court has yet to issue a decision regarding that request.

While we noted earlier today that preparations are moving full speed ahead for a debut of the white iPhone 4 within the next day or two and shipments making their way to retail stores, some retailers have jumped the gun and begun selling units to customers. Once such case popped up late last week in the UK through Vodafone, although the carrier apparently quickly clamped down on the rogue sale. But with more shipments now on location at retail stores, the premature sales are likely to occur with greater frequency.

One MacRumors reader wrote in today to say that he had just purchased a white iPhone 4 through a Mobistar retail shop in Antwerp, Belgium. According to the reader, the white iPhones are already available for general sale to all customers.

As in other recent photos, the final version of the white iPhone 4 carries a redesigned proximity sensor area on the front panel, utilizing a relatively large, lozenge-shaped area above the earpiece as opposed to the grille of small holes seen in early designs.

Update: iSpazio reports that yet another white iPhone 4 has been sold to a customer in Italy.

Update 2: The customer in Belgium has sent us another photo showing the "About" screen of the new white iPhone 4, revealing that the units are shipping with iOS 4.3.1 Build 8G4, the same build of iOS 4.3.1 released to GSM iPhone 4 users in late March. Apple has, however, since released iOS 4.3.2 for existing devices.