A daily digest of IT news, curated from blogs, forums and news sites around the web each morning. We highlight the key commentary and demystify the real story.
More new iPhone rumors are swirling this week. How about an iPhone 4 on Verizon Wireless and other CDMA carriers? Looks like we're close to the release date. And then there's the iPhone 5 testing, which is proceeding apace. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers squint at the now-traditional, blurry, leaked photos.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention 50 Viral Images The Web Shared In 2010...
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Jonathan S. Geller abbreviates wildly:
iPhone model 3,2 what everyone is assuming to be the Verizon ... phone just hit the AP testing stage ... the very last stage before retail ... final hardware, almost final software. ... The iPhone 3,2 unit ... contains a SIM card slot. ... 3,2 could be the mythical CDMA + GSM/HSPA device that would support ... worldwide ... frequencies.
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As far as the next generation iPhone 5... that device has hit the EVT stage in the development cycle ... the engineering verification test phase.
Mark Gurman contextualizes:
This is the stage after the stage of Gizmodos iPhone 4 prototype. So, were clearly pretty close to that Verizon iPhone if [Gellers] sources know what theyre talking about.
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Apples 5th-generation iPhone is in EVT-mode and this is the development stage directly prior to the stage Gizmodos leak was in. ... Apple is currently testing the engineering aspects of the device and is almost ... testing final hardware.
Chris Davies speculates on the SIM slot:
Theres no telling whether thats a global roaming concession, an LTE SIM reader, or something else.
But Jin Kim votes "somthing else":
The next iPhone has a SIM card slot and is CDMA. That might sound weird at first but it really isnt. When I was in South Korea many smart phones, including the Motorola Motoroi on SK Telecom that I used briefly, had a USIM card, which looks identical to a GSM SIM card.
Meanwhile, Richy Rich (no relation) claims to have photos:
Today, Im happy to report ... live shots of an N92DVT device, which was reported to be the CDMA version of the iPhone 4 back in August. ... These shots originated from a repair shop in Vietnam.
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As you can see in the images ... [it's] running a test operating system, similar to the inferno operating system that was found on the iPhone 4 beta images and video that leaked from Vietnam earlier this year.
But Kelly Hodgkins sounds skeptical:
In the end, these leaked images show little more than an iPhone-4 like handset that may ... be photoshopped to have the appearance of the rumored N92 CDMA variant. While the timing is right for a DVT prototype to surface ... I am not convinced that these images are legitimate.
Richi Jenningsis an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, you can follow him as @richi on Twitter, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itbw@richij.com.
