This Is The Next iPhone From Apple?

Granted, we tend to take many things with a giant grain of salt around here, especially news and photos claiming to be anything coming from Apple that hasn’t been officially announced by the company. With Apple’s well known obsession with secrecy and controlling the message leaks, especially of this magnitude, just don’t usually happen.

So, it was with that giant grain of salt that I took a look at the photos and specs of the supposed new iPhone which is now being showcased by the gang at Gizmodo. The new iPhone, reported to have been “found in a bar” and then given to the site, has a radically different design and features that seem, at least on the surface, to be real.

Although, I do have a hard time believing any Apple employee with this kind of access would accidentally leave something like a new iPhone in a bar. I personally know several people who work for the company and have met many more over the years and I’m pretty sure none of them are that stupid. Still, I guess anything is possible.

So, if we concede the iPhone is indeed real, here’s what Gizmodo found is new and different about it:

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 960×460 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

That all sounds great and this iPhone, if it turns out to be the real deal, is quite a departure design-wise from the current generation. Still, I kinda like it. I wonder what it will really look like when it gets released?

And, I wonder if it will be for Verizon? I sure hope so. Until then, head on over to Gizmodo for way more pictures and videos of this device.