by If you’ve been wanting to know what the so-called iPhone 5S looks like but don’t have the patience to wait for someone to lose it in a bar, we’ve (maybe) got some good news for you. This morning a leaked image of the new iPhone’s supposed logic board started circulating throughout the Internet after it appeared on Japanese blog Macotakara, and now MacRumors claims to have photos of the shell itself. The kinda-sorta bad news? There’s not much visible difference, although that was expected.
Macotakara found the photos on the blog for Moumantai, a Japanese parts supplier for end users. If legitimate, there’s currently no answer for how Moumantai came by the hardware. In the case of the logic board, the basic design looks much the same aside from aside from differences in the screw placement at the top and slight modifications to the bottom edge to account for some change to the speaker. In addition, some commentators note that it seems slightly slimmer than the logic board for the iPhone 5, possibly allowing room for a bigger battery.
Now for those photos of the display. MacRumors learned about the images via repair firms like iRepair, which have been receiving images from suppliers purporting to show the iPhone 5S’s parts. Interestingly, the blurry images MacRumors received–let’s hope those images weren’t taken by an Apple camera–appear to match the design on the allegedly leaked logic board. Specifically, the shell supports both horizontal and vertical connectors, exactly as with the leaked logic board. On the iPhone 5, both flex cable connectors are aligned horizontally.
Hardly the most exciting news, perhaps, and there’s no confirmation from Apple that they’re actually from the next iteration of the iPhone, expected to release sometime this fall. Still, if anything, the constant barrage of leaks (including parts for the FaceTime camera, the vibration motors, and other parts) popping up in the last week seems to imply that Apple will meet that launch date after all.
(Image sources: MacRumors)
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