Just weeks after a wayward, beta-test iPhone 4G prototype caused a stir when it made its way from a California bar into the hands of tech bloggers, a second prototype may be loose.
A Vietnamese tech site, TaoViet, posted photos of a device very similar to the one Apple acknowledged as its property last month, touching off a round of legal wrangling and bad public relations for the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer giant. The company, notoriously tight-lipped about product launches, is expected to unveil the newest iPhone this summer.
Unlike the model that was sold to Gizmodo last month for $5,000 after being misplaced by an Apple engineer and which was disabled remotely, the device displayed on the Vietnamese site is operational but uses a system called Inferno rather than the iPhone operating system.
“Inferno appears to be some sort of test program,” says Michael Gartenberg, a partner in the technology consulting firm Altimeter Group. He added that the distance from the U.S. makes it hard to assess whether the device is authentic or one of many knockoffs found in China and Japan. “It’s interesting to see another device, but we don’t know all that much until we see the final product with all the hardware and software finished and revealed,” he said.
While Apple’s response has been muted as of Wednesday afternoon, Gartenberg noted there isn’t much the company can do. “There’s no OS, so perhaps nothing to shut,” he said. “As it appears it is in Vietnam, there might not be much Apple can do to recover [it].”
The supposed 4G device also appears in a video on YouTube, showing a Vietnamese man examining the device and comparing it with an iPhone 3G, as well as demonstrating the ability to insert a micro SIM card.
The new device, with a…