14 DAY TRIAL // Pictures of what is referred to as iPhone HD have been leaked to a well-known tech site. Apple pundit John Gruber picked up on the story and, after contacting his sources, the blogger said he believed the device was an authentic test mule that simply got lost. The respective device was “a unit Apple is very interested in getting back,” the pundit said.
Engadget posted the pictures in question on Saturday reporting that it had been told the device was found on the floor of a San Jose bar inside of an iPhone 3G case, for disguise reasons. A front-facing camera was reportedly found on the device, which allegedly featured 80GB of storage. Engadget itself did more research, but was ultimately told by a number of observant commenters and tipsters that, “This looks almost exactly like a Twitpic posted by TUDream on February 20th.”
After hearing about this, “I was highly skeptical, to say the least. But: intrigued,” John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, wrote. Gruber has been historically accurate in Apple-related rumors, while his informed opinions generally spawn a substantial amount of hype.
“So I called around, and I now believe this is an actual unit from Apple — a unit Apple is very interested in getting back,” the blogger said. “I am not certain that this looks like the actual production unit Apple intends to ship to consumers. I think it’s a testbed frame — thicker, with visible (un-Apple-like) seams, meant to fit in 3GS cases so as to disguise units out in the wild. It’s hard to tell from the photos. But I think it is the real deal in terms of the internals and display being next-gen iPhone hardware, and the new glass back. Put another way: the front looks legit, the back looks legit, but the sides I’m not sure about. A front-facing camera and 960 × 640 display are two things I believe are slated for the next iPhone. (The ‘80 GB’ of storage sounds like a mistake to me, but who knows? SSD storage typically comes only in even power-of-two increments.)”
Gruber (and others) believe the smartphone is a significant revamp, thanks to the alleged high-resolution screen and a front video camera, a 5-megapixel camera with flash, 720p recording and playback, and a version of the iPad's A4 processor. Gruber added that the rumored “glass” back casing might actually be the results of a 2006 ceramic enclosure patent that would give the appearance of glass, citing several people who believed this was the case. The benefits of moving to ceramic casings would include a much stronger radio signal.
