Is this the iPhone 4G?
Yes it is! No it isn't! Wait, yes it is! Isn't it?
Over the weekend, some eagle-eyed Engadget reader apparently scooped up a mysterious device off a San Jose bar's floor, realised it was the latest iPhone hardware, and sent a bunch of snaps to the gadget blog.
This new device supposedly sports a higher resolution screen than the current iPhone, a front facing camera, MicroSIM card support, and a gigantic 80GB of storage. The floor-crawling bar patron said it booted up to a decidedly new firmware, but the phone refuses to turn on any more. How convenient.
Obviously, the first thing any internet sceptic will say when faced with a blurry photo of new hardware is "fake!"
One internet denizen, Ivan Meneses, even went to the effort of faking-up a photo to dismiss it as a fake, if you can believe that. He claimed to Spanish site Applesfera that the mystery gadget was in fact a cheap Japanese knock-off of the iPhone, and even provided pictures. When pushed, though, he broke down and confessed that it he himself was faking.
Back at Engadget towers, the lads have found some compelling evidence that the puzzling device might be the real deal. For one, the picture looks pretty similar to a photo uploaded to Twitpic by TUDream back in February.
Also, the Where's Wally grand champions spotted a similar looking gadget in the corner of a blurry, pre-release photo of an iPad: a photo apparently from Apple's Test Lab. The iPad looks pretty real, so perhaps the phone is, too? Engadget seems to think so.
Daring Fireball's Jon Gruber did his own Sherlock Holmes impression, and thinks the key to this photo's legitimacy is the glass-like back. While the iPad and MacBook Pro favour unibody aluminium enclosures, they're not so hot when it comes to getting mobile connectivity. And what do you know, the Cupertino company even patented a "ceramic material that is radio-transparent" back in 2006.
And finally, MacRumors forum poster mj12 found some "pics from one china website", showing off some phone innards and guts, that look pretty close to the pics from Engadget.
Despite some rather compelling evidence, we'd recommend still taking it as a rumour for now. We'll all know for sure soon enough though as Apple is set to introduce the latest iPhone hardware this summer.
