Spy Shot of iPhone 5 Captured In the Wild?

9to5Mac has published purported spy shots of an iPhone 5 sent in by a tipster who claims to have caught the device being fiddled with by a likely Apple employee on the way home from work in San Francisco. The tipster says that despite his grainy photo, he himself got a “very good look” at the device and said the photo “didn’t do it justice,” claiming the phone would fit perfectly into the supposed iPhone 5 cases that are making the rumor rounds.

The photo seems to show a glossy black Apple device with a chrome Apple logo on its back. It’s thinner than any current iPhone, but it does indeed appear to be a phone and not an iPod touch because of the ringer switch. However, the location of the ringer switch above the volume buttons would mean that the phone would not fit into the rumored iPhone 5 case from yesterday. The purported iPhone 5 cases show that the ringer switch has been moved to the opposite side of the iPhone, as seen in the photo below:

Via 9to5Mac:

“Almost EVO-like” in screen size, this iPhone also appears thinner than the current iPhone 4 but also wider. The edges are rounded metal like the edges of a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 but could still function as an antenna. The back is a curved/tapered glass or plastic. He couldn’t tell but if he had to guess he’d say glass. He said it looked too amazing to be built by anyone besides Apple (fanboy!).

A similar story of spotting an iPhone 5 in the wild was recounted just last month by tech broadcaster Leo Laporte on his MacBreak Weekly show. That story, which can be viewed in the YouTube video below beginning around 48 min 33 sec in, described a device with similar styling spotted in Silicon Valley:

We have major doubts on this one, as it’s hard to believe an Apple employee wouldn’t disguise the phone with a case or at least cover up the Apple logo. Even the infamous iPhone 4 prototype found in a California bar and sold to blog Gizmodo was hidden inside a casing that made it look like an iPhone 3G. Now some Apple employee is waving around an iPhone 5 prototype like some teenager in his daddy’s Porsche? Come on.

And grainy images of anything these days is generally suspicious. Pixelated? Yes. Grainy? No.