A white iPhone 3G. The elusive white iPhone 4 wasn't available for pre-order

Well, the black iPhone 4 which is available for pre-order in theory. It seems that AT&T’s network has been collapsing under the pressure of pre-order demand all day. Not only collapsing, but sending customers to other subscribers accounts and exposing their information when people are able to log in. D’oh!

Pre-Order Pandemonium

Let’s start with the pre-orders. AT&T has been partnered with Apple for a while. They know the power of the Cupertino marketing machine, and have profited handsomely from it even when times were tough. Somehow, the AT&T order servers weren’t prepared to meet the demand today when customers tried to get in pre-orders through physical stores, the AT&T and Apple websites.

Customers reported everything from pre-orders that took 20 minutes to go through, to timeouts on Apple’s site (which relies on AT&T servers) that never sent orders through, and lines of people standing outside stores which closed down in response to the system failures. For those who did make it through? Cancellation notices, multiple charges and notifications that the phone would be backordered 2-3 weeks. {Gizmodo}

For some of those stores that did stay open to try to field pre-orders, employees eventually brought out old fashioned pen and paper to get credit card imprints. And actually, the information of those people who did complete a written credit card slip may be more secure than those who continued to do battle with AT&T’s kooky ordering system.

Data Breaches: Oops! AT&T Did It Again

Gizmodo reports that at least 3 customers who logged in with their own username and password were taken to a completely different user account, which contains information on addresses, phone calls, bills and lots of other things you probably want to keep between yourself and AT&T.

The worst part of it? An AT&T employee claims the issues are related to network updates done over the weekend that weren’t tested before the pre-order launch.

“Whenever we see people who are logging in and seeing other customer’s account info, it is an issue with the databases that contain customer information. Orders that contain any information like this can cross customer information, and cause a customer be able to see other accounts by logging out and logging back in. This means that when they log in a few times, it gives them different customer account info every time. It’s a rare occurrence, but it has happened in the past,” says the unnamed source. {Gizmodo}

This comes on the heels of another security breach in which hackers discovered a relatively simple way to obtain the email addresses of iPad customers – again, on the back of AT&T’s data storage methods. The weekend update may have been intended to correct that problem, but seems to have opened up many more. For now, AT&T’s solved the problem by completely removing the iPhone eligibility page on their website.

We almost feel sorry for AT&T at this point, but those of you holding out for a Verizon iPhone may be able to take some comfort in knowing that this has to have the people over at 1 Infinite Loop rethinking their exclusive partnership.

• As expected, there’s now a front camera for video chat, and the 5-megapixel back camera now has an LED flash. Apple’s Face Time lets you switch between the cameras at the touch of a button.
• The screen now features a high resolution display that doubles the pixels in each direction (960 x 640) for a pixel count four times higher than previous models. Apple calls it a “Retina Display,”and claims that words and images are so sharp now that the human eye can’t distinguish individual pixels.
• Now with more power! The new iPhone runs on the same A4 processor that runs the iPad, which requires…
• More battery! The battery is a bit larger to handle all of the upgrades, which also bumps up the talk and browsing time. Compared to the previous version, the iPhone has 7 hours of 3G talk, 14 hours 2G (previously 6 and 12 hours respectively). Internet usage is up to 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours on WiFi (before, 5 and 9 hours respectively). And if you just want to keep things simple with a song or two, you can now get 40 hours of music play out of the new iPhone compared to the 30 hours of the previous device.
• As far as apps go, the iOS4 (iPhone Operating System 4) lets developers tap into the new high resolution display, the new gyroscope, and a new “Core Motion” API to make the iFart applications spin in any direction imaginable. We’re sure someone will find a better use for the motion technology.
• iBooks will also be coming to the iPhone, and while Apple doesn’t think much of Flash, they are offering native PDF support, which should please people who already have ebooks or reading material in that format.

Unfortunately, you’re all still stuck with AT&T, their increased fees and new metered data plans. The phone will be available in white or black, retailing at $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for 32GB. The 3GS will only be available from Apple and AT&T in the 8GB storage size, and will be dropped to $99. The 16GB $97 Wal-Mart iPhone suddenly looks like a slightly better deal. The 3G meanwhile, will disappear completely.

Pre-orders start on June 15th, with 5 countries at launch (US, France, Germany, UK, Japan) and 18 more to follow in July.