An “iPhone 6”, suspected to be a knock-off Chinese clone, has set pulses racing as Apple fans count down the last month until new phones are released.
The pictures of the device, supposedly in its final retail packaging,surfaced on the tech blog TechRadar on Monday morning. They show a phone similar to the iPhone 5S, albeit larger with more rounded edges and a few subtle design differences. The box itself is nearly identical to that of the 5S, while a picture of the phone being turned on shows the familiar Apple logo on a boot screen.
But a number of tell-tale signs highlight the pictures as probable fakes.
Most notably, the screenshot on the front of the case is of a device running iOS 7, due to be superseded by iOS 8 on the new devices released in the autumn. Missing from the front is the Health app, a default application on every iOS device and a major publicity target for Apple.
Similarly, the build quality of the phone itself appears not to be up to typical apple standards. The plastic strips breaking up the metal band around the side appear to have grown compared to the iPhone 5S, as has the visible separation between the glass and the screen – something Apple has been working to reduce over the years.
There are a number of discrepancies between the box art and the phone itself, with the box displaying a gold “iPhone 6” despite carrying a silver model.
To top it all off, the supposed source of the phone – “an Apple beta tester” – doesn’t match at all with how the company has previously distributed beta devices. In previous years, beta testers haven’t received their phones in retail packaging, and have instead been handed devices in cases designed to obscure the fact that they are an iPhone at all. It would a be a major change for a company with such a dedication to secrecy to lift such practices.
So where is the phone from? The pictures seem too imperfect to simply be a photoshop, and a few images – particularly the moire effect on the screen itself – would be hard indeed to fake.
Instead, it seems likely that the device is a knock-off iPhone 6 of the sort already produced and sold in Asian markets. Clone iPhones are big business, and the devices don’t just ape the physical look and feel of the phone, but even attempt to clone the UI as much as possible. In 2011, an American tourist in China even discovered a clone Apple Store, apparently staffed with employees who didn’t know they were not working for Apple.
In an effort to beat the competition, the knock-off vendors keep up to date with the rumour mill just as much as the biggest Apple fans, and begin production of their own versions well in advance of the launch. That might be how this device matches the rumoured screen size and hardware design so closely.
Despite Apple’s commitment to secrecy, the size of the initial shipment of iPhones is now so high, and the supply chain so large, that the firm struggles to prevent leaks to the same degree that it managed to in 2010, when the first generation iPad was introduced to an audience who had no clue what the device would look like.
The new iPhone is likely to include at least one larger model, with a screen measuring 4.7 inches, and maybe a second 5.5 inch device on top of that. Those screens could be made out of either sapphire or a sapphire blend, to make them more scratch-proof than any previous model.
