Ars Technica is releasing an “iPhone prototype,” which is very different from the device Apple first introduced to us in 2007.
Although it is not the first time that prototype proposals from the American company - which were never released on the market - have been leaked on the Internet, in this particular case what is interesting is the fact that it is a device that was created well before the launch of the first iPhone (specifically in 2005) and does not resemble it at all. Specifically, it is a product with a 5”x7” screen that refers more to… the iPad mini than to the iPhone.
The images were leaked via a former Apple employee who had worked on several of the company's hardware design projects in the early 2000s.
As we can see in the photos, the prototype device had a series of ports that we find more on computers than on mobile devices, such as USB ports, an Ethernet port and even a serial port. Let's not forget, of course, that this is a product that would not be released on the market, but was in the process of development.
As the source says, "it may seem big to us now, but it was really impressive at the time to see a version of OS X running on such a device."
Its ARM chip looks like a variant of the Samsung S3C2410, and it was clocked at 200-233MHz. (Recall that the first iPhone had a 620MHz chip clocked at 412MHz).
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Dimitrios Georgoulas @ GreekAppleNews
