Last year’s legal battle between Apple and Samsung unveiled a lot of behind the scenes action that takes place at the two companies but the most notable of them were the prototypes for both iPad and iPhone. Ars Technica has been able to get its hands on very early images of iPhone’s prototype that had not yet taken the shape of Apple’s flagship smartphone with which we are familiar today. In fact the image shows an 8.6-inch screen that is not even close to the design of the iPhone and it looks more like an iPad rather an iPhone. However, if you recall late Steve Jobs had revealed in an interview to AllThingsD that Cupertino-based company has first developed an iPad, but the company kept it on a side and then moved on to built the iPhone. So the 8.6-inch screen in the image is perhaps the prototype of an iPad that Apple developed before iPhone.
Rumour has it that the prototype is from 2005, whereas the photos have been obtained from an ex-employee of Apple, who had provided them on the condition of anonymity:
“That’s why we were excited to receive photos showing an in-house version of the iPhone from early 2005. The images to Ars through a former Apple employee who worked on various Apple hardware projects in the early 2000s and was thus exposed to some of the earliest versions of the iPhone. (He declined to be named out of concern for retribution from Apple.)”
The unfinished display shown in the picture also has a serial port along with Ethernet and USB ports. Talking about the unfinished prototype device an employee of Apple shared the information with Ars that the aforementioned components were integrated for the development stage and “at that early date no one knew what [the final device] would be.” The employee also said that the thickness of the prototype was about 2-inches and even though it “seems large now” but back in 2005 it was “really impressive seeing basically a version of OS X running on it.”
Technica also revealed that the unfinished device seems to be running some version of Samsung S3C2410, “a distant relative of the chip the first iPhone ended up using, just older and slower.”
“Indeed, the chip shown above was clocked at 200-233MHz, while the first 2007 iPhone used a 620MHz chip underclocked to 412Mhz.” Ars’ writer Andrew Cunningham said that, “This chip is also an ARM9 chip, while the original iPhone eventually ended up using an ARM11 chip, but obviously Apple intended to use Samsung-manufactured ARM chips even this far back.”
Source: 9to5Mac
Photo: 9to5Mac
Report Claims Apple Will Introduce Fingerprint Technology in iPhone 5S to Make Mobile Payments Through NFC More Secure
Analyst Downgrades Apple’s Stock Price from $500 to $420 Claims iPhone 5S is Delayed Until September
Lunches So Good Kids Can’t Ignore Them
Invigorating Ginger Smoothie
The U.K.’s Youngest Parents Ever
The new hair Jennifer Lawrence