In general, we try to stay away from unconfirmed rumors, especially when it comes to Apple and iphone news, but it seems this time, the rumors are true.
It seems that last month on March 18th, a phone was found in a beer garden in Redwood City, CA. A young Apple engineer had a few drinks and left it behind at their table. A new customer picked up the phone thought it was a standard iPhone (it had a rounded case on it that you would see on any 3G phone)
, ……….He decided to turn it on, look up the contact information in Facebook and tried to contact the owner (Grey Powell) at Apple. Unfortunately for Apple (fortunately for us), Apple simply provided him with a case number and not much else. The next day, the phone was no longer working (it seems it was disabled remotely).
After it was clear that it wasn’t going to be that easy to return the phone, the customer, still not realizing what he had found took off the case, and underneath the 3GS like cover was what looked like the new iPhone. It had a completely different case, buttons, even a front facing camera.
At that point, the customer realized what he had and decided to contact Engadget and Gizmodo to see who would pay for the phone. Almost immediately, Engadget published pictures of the phone as the rumored new iPhone on their site. Of course at that time, no one could confirm this particular rumor more so than the handful of photos we’re always seeing out of China about images of the new iPhone, etc. So why would this set of photos be any different?
……….. As with most rumors that come out and future product pics, this got some attention but not quite as much as what followed. It seems that Gizmodo went out and bought the device directly from the customer. Gizmodo confirmed that they paid $5,000 for it and a few weeks later posted complete information about the phone, its features, and inner workings (they took it apart). It seems that this phone has;
- 80 GB of storage – no way to really confirm this one, we’ll just have to wait and see.
- A Glass / Ceramic Back — Gizmodo guesses that this would let radio signals through much easier, and of course provide for swipe gestures on the back of the phone.
- Unconfirmed Resolution of 960×480 – since the phone was almost immediately shut off, this is just a guess, so i wouldn’t bet the farm on this one.
- Front-facing camera – Mobile video conferencing. Enough said.
- Flash — It seems that on the back of the phone, the 2nd camera has an LED flash next to it.
- Micro SIM Card — Since the iPad will have this in their 3G version, I’m not surprised that the phone would too.
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Updated OS — Since the phone was only turned on for that one night briefly, and the only person who played with it was the customer who found the phone, we can’t be sure, but it seems the phone was running a new OS (was it 4? or something coming? Guess we’ll have to wait to find out).
What makes this all so interesting, is that after Gizmodo published their findings this weekend it finally caught Apples attention and the following letter was received by them from Apple.
So at the end of the day, it seems we got an advanced look at whats coming down the pike this summer from Apple. Wonder if this is going to delay or speed things up!? I hope the latter.
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