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Leaked Photos Show New iPhone Hardware, Autofocus, Compass, compass-and-cam

Photographs of the next generation iPhone have shown up on a Chinese forum, and quickly disappeared, only to be preserved virtually everywhere else, most notably on the MacRumors forums where a full, human-made translation of the original thread has been made by Samac92.

The snaps, taken with the traditional “blurry-cam” required for spy-shots, supposedly show the third-gen iPhone hardware, which looks, not surprisingly, almost identical to the current hardware. In fact, the only indication that this isn’t the iPhone 3G comes in the form of a compass and an autofocus camera, the screens for which are clearly visible.

Both of these features require new hardware, and the rumors say that a new iPhone will indeed be getting a 3.2 megapixel, autofocus camera along with a magnetometer-driven compass. The shots look pretty good, and we’re inclined to believe them if only because of the Apple-like interface polish.

The shot above shows the mechanism for autofocus. The blue square is moved with a finger, and that’s where the camera focuses. The shot below shows the difference between pictures taken on an iPhone 3G (right) and the new iPhone. The difference is pretty clear. We also see the option to shoot video using the little on-screen switch at bottom right.

The compass screen could just be a mockup, but even so, it’s a very Apple-like design. Given the colander-like state of Apple secrecy in the last year, we’re certainly expecting some juicy, accurate leaks to spring in the iPhone gen-3 ship, and these might just be the first.

Info from Wired.com

These apps look really neat. I wish I had an Iphone. I am not on att's network Verizon here. I wish they would open it up so everyone could just buy whatever phone they want instead of having carrier exclusives. It does not make any sense to limit your hardware to only one group of the market instead of the whole market, but it looks like Apple is doing well for themselves despite that fact.