Apple has not released an iPhone since September 12 of last year, preferring to keep busy by fighting the battle of patents; filing, fighting, winning, losing. Despite the ominous silence emanating from Apple's Development Labs, rumors always seem to find a way to crop up, along with many photoshopped, edited and digitally rendered designs claimed to be authentic. However, in an unusual occurrence, we found two unrelated sources suddenly showing remarkably similar images of a new iPhone shape and casing material.
While an FBI "Zoom and Enhance" function would be handy here, we can still gather a lot from just two plain images. The phone seems to be made of plastic, suggesting this to be the design of the much rumored low-cost iPhone to be released along with the next generation iPhone hardware. The case design also fits the expectations we have of Apple, which has been leaning back to smooth cases again after the iPhone 5's relatively sharp edges. The dock connector seems to be the new lightning connector that Apple has decided to use instead of the industry standard micro USB, adding to the new iPhone expectation. While all of this speculation should be taken with a grain of salt, we can only hope that Apple decides to expand into the mid-range price market with a budget iPhone.
Of course, this could just be a case on an iPhone 5.
