As every year that passes, rumors about the new features and functionalities that will be included in the next iPhone come flooding back to the Internet. However, among the many leaks that the iPhone has suffered throughout its history, there is one that draws special attention: the iPhone 4 prototype.
The surprise leak of the iPhone 4 in 2010 was one of the biggest scandals in recent memory (especially for Apple). A prototype of the iPhone 4 was abandoned in a bar in San Jose, California, near Apple’s headquarters. Brian, a 21-year-old, was the lucky guy who found the iPhone 4 and after that, sold it to the website Gizmodo for the modest sum of $5,000.
However, Brian did not yet know that this transaction was going to be more expensive than he thought: the bitten apple company ended up suing Brian for theft of private property, which resulted in a rather large fine.
The first version we heard of this story is that an Apple employee accidentally left the iPhone 4 in the bar. Afterwards, Brian found it and instead of returning it to its rightful owner, he took it upon himself to search for technology websites that were interested in the device.
Some time later, Brian himself went to Reddit to make an AMA (Ask Me Anything), where users could ask him anything they wanted related to the iPhone 4 leak. Brian himself said in that post that he tried to contact Apple, but the company basically took it as a joke.
From the United States to Vietnam: the other lost prototype of the iPhone 4
To top it off, this isn’t the only iPhone 4 prototype that showed up where it shouldn’t have. While Gizmodo was leaking to the world what Apple’s future device would look like, a Vietnamese website published more footage of another iPhone 4. In this case, the handset was purchased by a Vietnamese businessman in the United States and cost him (allegedly) $4,000.
