Mike Peterson
A new clip published to YouTube gives a hands-on view of a rare "Death Star" iPhone 4 prototype, which features a number of differences than the production model.
YouTuber DongleBookPro showed off the prototype iPhone in a clip Friday. According to him, the device sports a "Death Star" logo because Apple was having issues with leaks of internal information and hardware.
The logo, as the story goes, could lead people to believe that the device was a Disney promotional product rather than an authentic prototype iPhone model.
There are a number of distinctions that differentiate the "Death Star" iPhone from an actual iPhone 4, too. The device uses a non-Retina display and lacks any visible screws — tearing apart the device involves using a screw hidden in the SIM card tray.
Additionally, the device has a completely different camera setup than the iPhone 4 models that made it to customers. As far as software, the device runs an internal testing build that could be the earliest iOS 4 build ever seen.
The device also has a unique clear case with a matching "Death Star" logo that was similarly unreleased.
This isn't the first prototype iPhone that has fallen into the hands of the public. For example, earlier in 2021, images of an iPhone 12 Pro in an early version of the Pacific Blue color way surfaced online.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
2 Comments
While potentially legitimate, the iPhone 4 came out in 2010 and Disney didn’t buy Lucasfilm until 2012. That doesn’t mean Apple wasn’t trying to pretend this was a Star Wars promotional product, just that it wasn’t related to Disney.
That’s pretty cool