iPhone HD Gets Caught, Gets Teardown, Deemed Legit

Somebody over at Apple is going to have an even worse day than they were likely already having.  After leaked photos over the weekend, the device now looking decidedly like the iPhone HD – aka Apple's fourth-gen iPhone – has shown up in the plastic, glass and metal over at Gizmodo.  Among the hardware changes are an improved main camera with flash and an added front-facing camera, a higher resolution display and some serious reworking of the internal components to fit in a 16-percent larger battery.

They're pretty convinced it's legitimate, too, since these aren't just photos – they've actually "acquired" the prototype and done a teardown.  Although it doesn't boot (Apple have supposedly remotely wiped it, though the person "who found it" says it was originally running iPhone OS 4.0) it is recognized as an iPhone in Xcode, OS X's System Profiler and iTunes.  It also has a microSIM slot, just like the WiFi+3G iPad, and is packed full of Apple-labeled components.

The hardware is thinner than the iPhone 3GS it looks set to replace, feels "freaking amazing", sturdier and less plasticky.  All the signs are lining up that this could actually be the real thing; check out Gizmodo's post for more details and video hands-on with the iPhone HD.