People lose their iPhones all the time. But it's not often that a super-secret prototype of a not-yet-released iPhone is carelessly left on the floor of a local bar.
Apparently that's what happened anyway... That this would happen to a company like Apple, which takes security of its products very seriously, is very surprising. Apple has not yet said there even is an iPhone 4G(although it's a safe bet there will be based on the pattern of the past three years). Steve Jobs has said that new iPhone software is coming "this summer," but the company has stopped short of acknowledging that new hardware is in the works.
Normally the first time we see a new Apple product it is in jobs' hands while standing on a stage in front of an audience of geeks and journalists. So what happened this time?
Engadget posted photographs what is said might be the forthcoming phone (iPhone 4G). Here's Engadget's explanation on how the images surfaced:
Apparently the phone was found on the floor of a San Jose bar inside of an iPhone 3G case. Right now we don't have a ton of info on the device in question, but we can tell you that it apparently has a front facing camera (!), 80GB of storage (weird, right?), and isn't booting at this point (though it was previously, and running an OS that was decidedly new). It's not clear if this is definitely a production model, or just a prototype that found its way into the world, but it's certainly a compelling design, no matter how you look at it.
How did this happen? For a company for whom secrecy is indispensable, consider the stories about the iPad prototypes that were bolted to tables for developers to work on and hidden under cloths, something so careless as to leave one of the most wanted consumer devices in a public place seems incredibly stupid.
