Exclusive: Pictures of a “mini” iPhone
Up until now my discussion of the iPhone and iPod Touch have been related to ebooks. I have avoided the rumor mill that is cranking at full speed among Apple fanboys and fangirls.
My wife sent me these pictures she took at her office (with her own iPhone 3G), where a co-worker had returned from Singapore – where he purchased it for around $100. He had, what by all appearances looked like a mini iPhone (nano?). My wife says that the "mini iPhone" had a different operating system (OS), but the home screen looked identical to what’s on the market now.
Take a look for yourself:
She reports that the back casing is identical, and the smaller iPhone was a 16GB.
She also reports the smaller screen size made the icons more difficult to press. The above photo is taken with the smaller iPhone next to another co-worker’s iPhone 3G. No Photoshop tricks here!
I remain skeptical
There have long been rumors of a iPhone nano, but those rumors appear to have been put to rest earlier this year, at least that’s according to this post from AppleInsider, with acting Chief Executive Tim Cook explaining Apple’s position on an iPhone nano:
"You know us, we’re not going to play in the low-end voice phone business.That’s not who we are. That’s not why we’re here. We’ll let somebody do that, our goal is not to be the unit share leader in the phone industry. It is to build the best phone."
Furthermore, I think going smaller, especially with the touch screen, would be a bad move. Typing would become difficult and it might even compromise picture quality as well.
My own theory is that we might indeed be looking at official Apple hardware for a smaller iPhone that never made it out of testing phase. Either that, or even the hardware is a fraud. And the fact that the mini iPhone had a different OS, it only stregthens my belief that it’s a look-alike and nothing more.
The ebook reading angle
A smaller iPhone would also be bad for the ebook crowd. Many people think the current iPhone is too small to read ebooks. I think an even smaller screen would make reading ebooks uncomfortable at the very least, if not impossible.
We’ll know for sure this summer!
Apple will be unveiling the iPhone 3.0 this summer, which does include a major hardware and firmware upgrade. Maybe I’m wrong and they are going to release a smaller version of the iPhone. I don’t know.
What do you think? Is the phone this guy bought in Singapore a fraud, or a sign of things to come? Leave a comment below with your thoughts!
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