US technology blog Gizmodo has got its hands on what it believes to be the next iPhone. According to the blog, the iPhone prototype was apparently found “lost in a bar” near Apple’s headquarters, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS.
The authors of Gizmodo report they were initially sceptical, but after “playing with it for about a week—the overall quality feels exactly like a finished final Apple phone”. Disassembling the phone provided further evidence of its authenticity.
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The site’s sources say that Apple is indeed reporting that it has “lost” a prototype and that “they want it back”. However there are reports that indicate Apple did not accidentally lose the phone and considers it “a stolen unit”.
April 1 was 20 days ago, so we can be sure there is no joke here.
This is either one very clever, carefully staged publicity stunt or CEO Steve Jobs will be fuming at what would be an unprecedented and rather silly slip-up by Apple — a company known for an almost paranoid secrecy around its new gadgets.
On the Gizmodo blog Jason Chen writes: “We get false tips all the time, but after playing with it for about a week… there is so much evidence stacked in its favour that there’s very little possibility that it’s a fake… in fact, the possibility is almost none.
According to Gizmodo, the key changes to the iPhone are:
What’s new
- Front-facing video chat camera
- Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
- Camera flash
- Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
- Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×640 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
- What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
- Split buttons for volume
- Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
What’s changed
- The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
- An aluminum border going completely around the outside
- Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
- Everything is more squared off
- 3 grams heavier
- 16% Larger battery
- Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery
