The Next iPhone Revealed In Photos

 iPhone Prototype Abandoned In Redwood City Bar

On March 18^th 2010, an Apple Software Engineer named Gray Powell accidentally left a new prototype iPhone in a beer garden called Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City. Powell was out with friends celebrating his 27^th birthday when he left the device, which was housed in a plastic casing to make it look like a current generation iPhone 3GS, on the bar before leaving for the night.

The last time Powell saw his next-gen iPhone, he used it to update his Facebook status. “I underestimated how good German beer is,” he wrote. Apparently, he also underestimated German beer’s effect on his short-term memory, because he abandoned the top-secret prototype, which eventually ended up in the hands the editors of the technology and consumer electronics weblog Gizmodo.

Part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, Gizmodo has been known for being generally pro-Apple, and Steve Jobs has gone so far as to say it’s his favorite gadget blog. But that didn’t stop Gizmodo from paying the prototype’s unnamed finder a cool $5,000 for the device, or from releasing a complete scoop on the new iPhone’s design, inside and out, including scanned photos and videos.

Apple can’t be too happy about the situation, though it is not known at this time what action the company plans to take to regain control of the iPhone product news cycle. Apple usually makes announcements regarding new versions of the iPhone hardware in late spring, but has remained silent on the topic of Gary Powell’s big mistake. Apple is known for its exacting security protocols; many prototype gadgets are even kept bolted down behind armored doors. Apparently the company had allowed some employees to conduct testing out in the field for this new iPhone prototype, but the phones were to be disguised as current iPhone models, and kept close at hand.

The new device seems to offer some new features including a front facing camera, a flash bulb for taking photos, and a new sleeker design. Gizmodo has published a series of stories, scanned photo galleries, and videos all about “the next iPhone,” which can be seen at http://gizmodo.com/tag/iphone4.

Tags: iPhone, scanned photos

This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under Photo Scanning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.