iPhone 5 to Have 8MP Camera, Suggests “Leaked” Photo

by Harry on September 9, 2011

A photo uploaded on Flickr, supposedly taken by an Apple engineer at Cupertino, could be the first “leaked” image taken with an iPhone 5. Pocketnow.com, a website focusing on smartphones, discovered the photo while browsing Flickr looking for images taken with the new iPhone 5. ArsTechnica also commented on the find, considering the leak plausible enough.

iPhone 5 leaked photo, depicting a sushi plate

The leaked photo, supposedly taken with an iPhone 5 prototype

According to the GPS data contained in the photo (which, of course, could also be forged) and the info on the Flickr profile, the photo was uploaded by an engineer at Cupertino this July, during lunch. Soon after the news about the leaked photo started spreading, the guy removed the photo from public viewing.

While the EXIF of the photo lists the camera as an iPhone 4, the pixel dimensions of the photo (2291 x 2235) don’t match those of the current iPhone 4 (2592 x 1936). According to the EXIF data, the photo was also cropped from an original resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels, or 8MP.

Other interesting data in the EXIF include:

  • Maximum aperture: f/2.4 (current iPhone 4 maximum aperture is f/2.8)
  • Focal length:4.28mm (current iPhone 4 focal length is 3.85mm)

ArsTechnica goes on with an analysis of the EXIF and a comparison with photos taken with current generation smartphones equipped with 8MP sensors, concluding that that new iPhone might offer little improvements over the current iPhone 4 camera, especially in terms of noise reduction.

Whether this leak is an hoax or not, the iPhone 5 is expected to launch in the next months, possibly as early as October. In fact, while details on the device are scarce, according to the latest reports, suppliers are already manufacturing the iPhone 5 components at full speed, with 150,000 units being assembled each day.

This fall will also see the release of iOS 5, which will be compatible also with current generation iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS.

Jim Moore September 9, 2011 at 10:27 am

What is going on with these engineers at Apple. Getting drunk in pubs losing commercially sensitive devices, being spotted on the BART using oversized iPhones, and now posting willy nilly to the internet.

Sure it’s great for iPhonophiles around the world because we get a glimpse of what’s coming… but it’s apparent that the security practices at Apple are pretty lax.

Harry September 9, 2011 at 9:55 pm

Hehe good point.

Well, if you think that the device is already in production at the rhythm mentioned in the article, it is surprising we still do not know more details about it – just speculation.

Apple distributes development devices to their employees at each release cycle in order to properly test them; I have no idea about numbers of iPhone 5 devices in the hands of Apple employees, but if you have hundreds of devices around, things like this can happen, idiots are everywhere.

Some think that these leaks are just planned by Apple to generate even more buzz around their devices, but Jobs seemed very pissed off at last year’s lost iPhone 4 affair and determined to destroy all those involved . The two guys who sold the device to Gizmodo are now facing serious legal troubles.

Grendalin Q September 9, 2011 at 4:43 pm

More importantly: engineers at Cupertino eat sushi for lunch 😀

Paul D September 9, 2011 at 6:29 pm

Forging the data to make it look like it was taken with iPhone 5 when it wasn’t? What’s the point? More likely Apple engineers are not familiar with flickr’s hide exif option…

Harry September 9, 2011 at 9:34 pm

There are nearly 9,000,000 search engine searches each month about the iPhone 5 specs, so there are reasons to forge stuff like this, like for attracting traffic to your Flickr profile (I did not see any confirmation that the guy is 100% an Apple software engineer).

But I also agree that it is very likely the engineer simply did not think about the info he was leaking by posting on Flickr. After all, the EXIF still shows the camera as “iPhone 4”; even if he knew how Flickr works, he did not expect people to go check the resolution of the image, probably.

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