• April 27, 2011

It may not reach the fervor of an iPhone 5, but Apple enthusiasts will mark Thursday as the day in history when they were finally able to get the elusive white iPhone.

Apple announced Wednesday the phone will be available through company stores, as well as through carriers AT&T Wireless and Verizon Wireless on Thursday. The white iPhone 4 will cost $199, the same price as the traditional black iPhones. (The white phone will be available in 26 other countries as well.) The white phone had been promised last year, when the iPhone 4 was originally introduced.

At the same time, Apple denied it was collecting user location data, and said its phones only kept user location information as a way to identify WiFi hotspots and cell towers in a general area to enable faster location-based services. The phone would store that data for a year because of a software error, according to the company, which intended to fix the problem through an update.