14 DAY TRIAL // In reporting the iPhone 5 Foxconn leak caught on film, China’s MIC Gadget reveals an interesting tidbit about the current activity at Terry Gou’s Jincheng factory.
A prototype iPhone 5 allegedly “discovered” by a person visiting a friend at Foxconn is doing the rounds on the web, with an actual video showing the smartphone booting up.
The leak looks legitimate. However, with only a few days away from Apple’s now-confirmed September 12 event, it’s hardly as exciting as it could have been say, a week ago.
Highlighted by MIC Gadget, the story becomes all the more interesting as we also learn how these phones are made and how many of them are moved around the assembly line on a nightly basis.
According to a person with knowledge of the Jincheng plant, each worker has to put the finishing touches on a whopping 3,000 iPhone enclosures every night.
Per the Chinese report, “So, in Foxconn’s Jincheng factory, our sources tell us that each Foxconn worker needs to finish some touch-up cleaning to complete up to 3,000 iPhone 5 back panels every night in recent months.”
If the story holds water, it seems Foxconn has instated nightly shifts to assemble as many iPhone 5 units as possible in the days leading up to the physical availability of the handset. To our knowledge, these nightly shifts weren’t a common practice before.
There have been reports that some of Apple’s part suppliers, including Sharp (which makes the displays), and Qualcomm (which makes the cellular chips) are facing production hurdles, potentially affecting initial shipments of the handset.
However, such reports have not been corroborated by the aforementioned companies themselves.
Apple is holding an event on September 12 (Wednesday, next week), during which it will unveil the next-generation iPhone likely dubbed “iPhone 5.”
Apple is said to be rolling it out physically on September 21.