2010 iPhone 4G or iPhone HD: rumors fly after bar-floor find

We now know much more about 2010's iPhone 4G (or perhaps iPhone HD). The mysterious unit lost in a Silicon Valley bar has gotten bloggers all spun up. But after much chattery analysis over the weekend, the consensus is that it's real: not just rumors. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers trade X-walks-into-a-bar jokes.

By Richi Jennings. April 19, 2010.
(AAPL)

Your humble blogwatcher selected these bloggy morsels for your enjoyment. Not to mention the best bar game...
 
 
So... Joshua Topolsky walks into a bar:

Apparently the phone was found on the floor of a San Jose bar. ... We can tell you that it apparently has a front facing camera (!), 80GB of storage ... and running an OS that was decidedly new. ... It's certainly a compelling design, no matter how you look at it..
...
This looks almost exactly like a Twitpic posted by TUDream on February 20th.

And Evan Selleck asks, "Why the long face?":

While we can’t say whether or not we’re convinced, these are definitely doing their best ... definitely better than what we’ve seen before. ... It definitely does look like ... an aesthetically upgraded iPhone. ... From two (new) hardware keys on the left-side of the device, underneath what we imagine is the mute switch. The device seems pretty thick, but not so much that we think it’d be a pain to hold.
...
There’s no telling if this is the final build design, or if this is just some kind of prototype that got lost in the depths of Cupertino.

Nikolay Andreev has some interesting analysis:

Apple has taken a new approach to internal hardware design. ... The main supporting structure for the device is a 1 or 2 piece unibody aluminum frame. ... [With] a full edge to edge top and bottom glass cover. How revolutionary is that?
...
I really like how Apple how found a way to simplify the whole design down to it two favorite materials: ...  just 2 glass and 1 or 2 aluminum parts. ... If they also put in their own SoC silicon now, this phone will have an incredibly low production price.
...
How do you beat that HTC?

John Gruber dares to correct one detail:

I know the trend for Apple of late has been toward unibody aluminum enclosures ... but ... that works poorly for a phone, because the radios can’t get a strong signal. ... The back is made out of some sort of fancy glass.
...
Antoine Hebert emailed with this 2006 Apple patent, for high-durability ceramic enclosures. Glass-like ... but far stronger ... more scratch resistant ... radio transparent.

But Art Green gets frisky:

My gut wants to tell me that the image is fake. Too many times have people [gone] to great lengths to prove that technology ... writers are [lazy] ... and end up doing something like sending fake images to websites.

And here's John Hawkes' conflicted first reaction:

It just doesn’t look like the next iPhone, it looks like a Chinese knock-off. ... This seems too slab-like and too much of a regression back toward the first iPhone. Has Johnny Ives gone 2007 retro already? I thought it’d be another 50 years before mid-2000 style came back around again.
...
I say, no way, but I didn’t think the leaked “fat Nano” pics were real at first either.

So what's your take?
Get involved: leave a comment.
 
 
And finally...

• Best. Bar. Game. Ever.
  [hat tip: B3ta]

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him as @richi on Twitter, or richij on FriendFeed, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itblogwatch@richij.com.

 
 
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