Was it the Real iPhone 4G?

Last week, gadget blog Gizmodo reported the story of a lost iPhone which came into their possession. What made this story newsworthy was that the phone in question was a prototype iPhone 4G.

The brief background to the story is as follows. Apple employee Gray Powell had celebrated his birthday at a German beer garden and left his phone behind. The person who found the phone made efforts to find the owner and after failing to do so realized what he had in his hands. He then promptly sold it to Gizmodo.

The features on the phone reported by Gizmodo do seem to fall in line with what is expected from Apple’s new phone. However the story reeks of a publicity stunt. The iPhone 4G is a hotly awaited piece of hardware. But even with a product like that, it doesn’t hurt to stir up the pot a little bit. Apple’s publicity stunts are usually well thought out and executed. In that light, this incident falls into place quite nicely.

Consider this:

– the employee never made an attempt to recover the phone
– the phone was shutdown remotely, before Gizmodo could test it out
– the device looked a little different than the usual sleek design style of Apple products (it looked boxy and had little round buttons on the side)

The two possible conclusions that can be drawn from this are:

1. This is Apple’s teaser campaign.
2. This is Apple’s way of throwing people off course and creating a buzz about the ugly design etc.
Of course, it could be that all of this was genuine. In that case, spare a thought for poor Mr. Powell and his career.