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iPhone 4 hits the shops in Ireland

Friday, July 30 15:11:41

There were queues outside major phone shops across the country - some starting before dawn - as the much heralded new iPhone 4 hit the shops in Ireland.

Unlike previous iPhone launches, customers have a greater choice of networks, with O2, Vodafone and 3 Ireland all offering the handset.

3 claimed to sell the first iPhone 4 in Ireland - to celebrity chef Eamonn O'Cathain, who was the first person in line at the 3 Store on Dublin's Grafton Street to purchase the latest must have handset.

Rival network O2 opened the doors of some stores in Dublin, Drogheda, Tralee, Galway, Cork and Limerick at 8am. However the operator said it was restricting its iPhone 4 sales to existing customers for the initial launch period as stocks were expected to be limited.

The iPhone 4 was unveiled to great hype on June 7th. It went on sale in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan on June 24th, notching up pre-orders of more than 600,000 in a single day.

By June 28th, more than 1.7 million handsets had been sold.

However, the iPhone 4 has suffered a number of setbacks since its launch, with complaints from some users that the reception on the phones was affected by holding it in a certain way.

Despite telling customers that there was no problem with the phone's antenna, Apple was forced to offer users free rubberised cases to cover the area on the phone that caused problems.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the company knew its iPhone 4 would lose signal when held a certain way, but did not think it would be a big issue. At a press conference earlier this month, he demonstrated similar issues with other smartphones, including Blackberry and HTC handsets.