The Internet was all aflutter this morning with news tech hardware site, Gizmodo, had managed to pick up a next-gen iPhone, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS, but neglectfully left sitting all on its lonesome at a bar in Redwood City, California.
Was it authentic? A very well crafted fake? No one knows for sure, but after a week of playing with it, dissecting it and performing a full autopsy – guts and all – Gizmodo is pretty certain the device is the real deal.
Living by the mantra, “pics or it didn’t happen,” Giz went one better by posting up a video of the device, which Apple Inc. reportedly wants back urgently.
So frantic is Apple that it purportedly even sent a remote “kill-pill” to the device, which was apparently running iPhone OS 4.0 when it was found, even before OS 4.0 was announced. The remote killing, however, proved successful, making it impossible for Gizmodo’s crew to get past the “connect to iTunes” start screen.
That doesn’t mean Gizmodo wasn’t able to gather rather a lot of information about the device, however, including confirmation of the fact it would have both a front and back camera, with a better lens, a flash (finally) and a higher resolution screen than the current 3Gs version.
The mystery device also sported a micro-SIM slot like the one on the iPad, a Nexus one style second microphone for noise cancellation, weighed an extra three grams and had a rear casing probably made from plastic, although it could possibly have been glass. All in a thinner, sleeker aluminum chassis.
Apple has been changing things up inside the new iPhone too, apparently, with many parts shrunken down to make room for a larger battery.
The leak is probably the most serious of its kind ever to be faced by the fruity gadget maker, and if it is indeed real – and there’s every indication that it is – a certain Apple employee may find his or herself on the chopping block.
Gizmodo must be loving every minute of the attention, though, with the site’s hits skyrocketing as Apple fans and curious onlookers logged on to get a taste of the latest Jobs goods. The site has been scoring millions of page views, worth their weight in gold, even if it did cost the gadget site a purported $10,000 for the device.
If sex sells, Gizmodo has certainly found its Apple pie.
*Update: Gizmodo’s parent company, Gawker, actually only paid $5,000 for the device, so reports in the media today were a tad overblown.
Also, the Apple employee who lost the phone used MobileMe to disable the phone – rather than a remote Apple sponsored bricking – so standard procedure for ANY lost iPhone.
Some also believe the entire story was masterminded by Apple itself, who leaked it to its two biggest fanboy tech blogs, Engadget and Gizmodo, to try and fight off all the newer phones on the better networks with better specs that are in preorder now.
Still, a rather intriguing plot to liven up the Monday morning algae pond of stagnant weekend news.
