A5 iPhone 5 prototype released in earnest, but you can't have one (yet)

Here's a bizarre move which will only up the ante when it comes to the up-in-the-air release date of the iPhone 5: Apple is already circulating an A5-equipped iPhone 5 prototype in an iPhone 4 body to trusted app developers for the sake of ensuring said apps are able to take full advantage of the more powerful A5 architecture by the time the iPhone 5 launches. It all makes one wonder just how near or far away the iPhone 5 really is, and whether the developer model being circulated is merely retaining the iPhone 4 body type in order to keep the appearance of the iPhone 5 a secret, or whether the iPhone 5 will in fact look just like the iPhone 4 from the outside after all. Either way, one thing's for sure: you can't have one. Yet.

The kicker, of course, is that Apple is being awfully trusting of third parties, considering that last year an iPhone 4 prototype ended up being sold to the highest bidder and paraded around on the internet as a trophy. Apple's hopes of keeping the original iPhone 4 design a secret were dashed, houses were raided, and the expectation was that the already secretive and paranoid Apple would become even more so after the incident, heading into the iPhone 5 release. And yet here's Apple distributing a quasi-next generation iPhone before its unveiling. It's assumable that at least one of the prototypes will be lost, stolen, photographed, or otherwise before it's all said and done. And while it may look just like an iPhone 4 from the outside, there have to be details inside which, if torn apart, would reveal more information than Apple wants – or maybe not.

In fact the term "iPhone 5″ is something that we outsiders have made up to describe what we suspect Apple's fifth generation iPhone will be, without any knowledge of what the product will be or even whether it will carry that name. The fifth generation iPhone could be a complete external overhaul from the iPhone 4, or it could in fact be the developer prototype being circulated. Either way the move raises more questions than it answers. All it tells us for sure is that the next iPhone will have an A5 processor in it. But then again, on the heels of the A5 iPad 2, that was one of the few iPhone 5 details which was already assumable. Here's more on the iPhone 5.