As Apple’s September 10th iPhone event approaches, a few new photos claiming to show packaged “iPhone 5Cs” and accompanying materials have surfaced online. The first photo comes from website iApps.im, and it purports to show several “iPhone 5C” units in packaging. The “iPhone 5C” is what many are calling Apple’s upcoming lower-cost, plastic-backed iPhone. The packaging in these photos appears to line up with a purported packaging leak from earlier this year…
Because of the uncertain track record of the source of the image and the image’s overall low quality, it is difficult to judge if the images are legitimate. However, they do seem to line up with Apple’s past patterns. With the 2012 iPod nano, Apple color-matched the external coloring of the device with the wallpaper. As can be seen in the above image, it appears that the iPhone has a red wallpaper and the device has a red plastic back. The red plastic back would line up with several part leaks from the past few months.
In addition, a pair of images claiming to show “iPhone 5C” packaging materials (the included manual and SIM card ejection tool) have emerged on micro-blogging website Weibo. The track record of the image poster is uncertain, though the image’s contents do lineup with the aforementioned, separately leaked image and past image leaks.
The above image shows a black-front-faced device with a white plastic back. This white plastic back and black face would lineup with an image purportedly leaked out of Pegatron (an Apple manufacturing partner) last month. The white wallpaper and white back also supports the ‘iPhone 5C’ including color-matched wallpapers.
A second image (above) from the same Weibo source purports to show the bundled SIM card ejection tool. The paper materials are printed on semi-oval-shaped paper, and this would match nicely with the leaked semi-oval-shaped plastic packaging.
As for the plastic iPhone’s internals, sources previously said that many of the internals in the device will match up with the currently available iPhone 5.
A few more images have surfaced. The first, directly below, highlights a potential blue “iPhone 5C” model:
Why put the iPhone 5C in a transparent box unless it’s supposed to sit on shelves en masse in thousands of retail outlets like iPod touch?
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) September 2, 2013
Some more colors all in one shot:
A green unit without the sticker:
This plastic iPhone will join the new iPhone 5S, the higher-end device that will look like the current iPhone 5, include a fingerprint scanner, faster processor, improved camera functionality, and come in a few new color options (including gold and possibly graphite).
Both devices are expected to debut at Apple’s September 10th media event and arrive in stores around September 20th. Apple has begun training its AppleCare support staff on iOS 7 and iTunes Radio, the new software and services that will launch in tandem with the new hardware.
