White iPhone, is that really you?

White iPhone holdouts could soon be rewarded for their patience. The long-lost model may have finally emerged from its nine-month nap.

White iPhone 4 handsets could soon go on sale at Best Buy, according to one new report.

Newscom

February 7, 2011

When we last visited the saga of the White iPhone 4, the ever-elusive device had been once again delayed by Apple brass. (You'll recall that Steve Jobs, in unveiling the iPhone 4 in 2010, promised the imminent release of a white model. Only the black model ever showed up.) But hold fast, white iPhone stalwarts! Salvation may be on the way.

Engadget has published a pair of photos – one from a Best Buy outlet and the other from the Canadian retail giant The Source – which appear to show the White iPhone 4 is ready for release. The first photo was snapped at a Best Buy in Houston, and includes a price tag for a "white iPhone 4," powered by AT&T, and available off-contract for $599. (As Engadget notes, that's the same price as an off-contract black iPhone 4.)

The second photo, which was apparently taken in a Source store in Canada, depicts similar tags for two White iPhone 4s, one with a 16GB capacity, and the other with a 32GB drive. So, yes, unless a) these photos are fakes or b) the staffs of both stores have really messed up, there's a good chance that a White iPhone is likely to show up sometime soon.

Last July, not long after the official launch of the iPhone 4, Apple issued a statement blaming the white handset delay on manufacturing problems.

"White models of Apple's new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year," Apple reps wrote. "The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected." At the time, Apple was still predicting that a white iPhone 4 would hit by the end of 2010.

That forecast was eventually changed to the spring of this year. It's worth noting that AT&T has a bit of a record of racking up incredible backorders on popular products, from the original iPhone 4 to the white iPhone. Verizon, on the other hand, has told its employees to wait on the iPhone 4, in order to keep the handsets available for regular customers.