Apple has announced that a special conference will be held this Friday in regards to the iPhone 4. No details ahve been released about what will be discussed, but I guess the key points are pretty obvious.

Rumours of a new manufacturing technique are flying around the web that may be discussed. This technique would apply a non conductive coating to the phones external antenna. This might spoil the aesthetics of the phone, but could fix the signal issues.

We now know that the iOS 4.1 beta does not fix the issue. Which, when the update/fix was announced, AppleCare said would not work. So, the word pointless springs to mind.

The invitation-only event on Friday will hopefully see the issue addressed by Apple. And their plans to fix the hardware issue revealed, which could well be a recall of the device.

Analysts have predicted losses of $1.5 billion plus for Apple if they don?t announce a recall and and additional $200 million a day until that announcement is made.