September 30th has come and gone… without a peep from Apple. If you recall, that’s when their iPhone 4 free case program was set to expire. I’d wondered what, if anything, would happen come that date. To help them along, I even offered up a few redesign suggestions that might overcome their reception-killing death grip problem. But three months is a very short period of time to redesign a product that sells in the quantities that Apple’s dealing with… and I suspected Apple might ultimately decide to apply some sort of clear coating around the phone’s all-metal trim to reduce attenuation as stop gap (on the road to a LTE iPhone 5).
We did have a litte skin in the game, as Melissa qualifies for a iPhone 4 upgrade. Which is pretty much a no-brainer for her since she can easily sell her 3GS for at least as much as the $200 iPhone 4 will cost her. But on the off-chance Apple could have worked some sort of redesign, we waited it out. So, if/when she chooses to upgrade, we’re now out a free case (~$30). However, Apple is still providing free bumpers to folks with signal issues. As they stated leading up to September 30th:
We now know that the iPhone 4 antenna attenuation issue is even smaller than we originally thought. A small percentage of iPhone 4 users need a case, and we want to continue providing them a Bumper case for free. For everyone else, we are discontinuing the free case program on all iPhone 4s sold after September 30, 2010.