Pictures of iPhone 4G with white front panel surface

Alleged photos of a next-generation iPhone partially assembled with a white front panel have surfaced online, further suggesting that Apple will offer two colors of its redesigned handset.

The Taiwanese website Apple.pro posted pictures of both a black redesigned iPhone, as seen in numerous leaks, next to a new white model, with the color taking up the entire front panel and home button. The front panel is identical to a leaked part that was revealed online last week.

The pictures show the white panel loosely resting atop the rest of the iPhone, with the home button recessed, suggesting that the website simply placed the component on top of the rest of the obtained part to show what a white iPhone 4G could look like. Previously, the same website had shown pictures of the white panel separate from the rest of the phone.

The white panel has a hole for a forward-facing camera, identical to the components found in assembled prototypes that have been publicly disassembled and photographed. But those prototypes showed the device black front and pack panels.

Apple first began to offer color options with the iPhone 3G in 2008 with the second-generation version of the hardware. Apple gave the iPhone a polished, plastic back, available in shiny black for the 8GB and 16GB models, and offered a polished white option for the 16GB model only. But both the black and white models retained the black front panel surrounding the handset's multitouch LCD screen, while the new part suggests Apple could bring the color to the front side of the device.