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According to a Mexican telco exec, Apple will release an iPhone 4 with an upgrade to its problematic antenna after its "free case" giveaway ends on September 30.

"A partir del 30 de septiembre estarán disponibles ... los nuevos dispositivos que no tienen el desperfecto de la recepción," Marco Quatorze of Mexican wireless carrier Telcel told the Spanish-language tech website Canal-MX.

Our high school Spanish tells us that Quatorze said that after September 30, there will be new devices available that won't have the reception flaw. "El problema es la antena," he said — and we're confident you won't need Google to translate that straightforward assertion for you.

The Reg rushes to remind you, dear reader, that this is a mere rumor — or, en Español, rumor. Apple, as is its wont, has made no announcement of any updated iPhone 4 being in the works — and it's unlikely to do so at its musical event scheduled for this Wednesday.

But the date is an interesting one. At his "There is no Antennagate" press conference in mid-July, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that free reception-enhancing cases would be made available to any iPhone 4 owner who requested them — but only until September 30.

When asked what would happen after the giveaway ended, Jobs said that the program would be re-evaluated. Perhaps it won't need to be — perhaps the iPhone's problematic antenna will be somehow insulated so that it won't need to be bumperized. Perhaps.

Being Apple-watchers, we're reduced to reading tea leaves to divine what's going on in the minds of One Infinite Loop — and two tiny flakes of lapsang souchong have caught our eye.

One is that the elusive white iPhone 4 was delayed yet again in July, a week or so after the "TinA" press conference. Apple's announcement of that delay gave no specific date for whitey's arrival, saying only that it would appear "later this year."

Perhaps a partir del 30 de septiembre? Perhaps.

Leaf number two is the report that floated across the intertubes right before "TinA" that some users with problematic phones had returned them, only to discover that the replacement phones didn't exhibit "death grip" symptoms.

Perhaps fixed 'Phone 4s have already entered the product stream? Perhaps.

More likely, however, is that Quatorze is simply wrong. As MacRumors rightly points out in its discussion of the MexExec's claims, it strains credulity that a person in Quatorze's relatively low-level position of "Director of Value Added Services" would have insider knowledge of such matters.

Perhaps he simply misinterpreted Jobs' case-supply deadline as meaning that iPhone 4 changes were afoot.

Perhaps. ®

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