![]() He began shopping the device around for $10,000–this was according to Gizmodo’s arch-rival Engadget, who later redacted this bit of reporting from their original story for reasons that are still unexplained. So this unnamed new owner was left with a next-gen iPhone prototype and no way to return it. Even worse, Apple couldn’t track the phone using GPS, since the Find My iPhone feature just happens to not work in the current beta of iPhone OS 4.0. The company remotely disabled the device the very night it was lost, which meant they could not call or text the phone to ask for it back. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime story, after all who would believe that a next-gen iPhone was found on the floor of a German bar in Redwood City?Īpple itself was unable to track the phone down. ![]() In a followup, Gizmodo’s John Herrman explains why the phone was unable to make its way back to Apple–the new owner called Apple customer service, but due to Apple’s vaunted secrecy, the customer service agents knew nothing of the phone and assumed, reasonably enough, that it was a Chinese knockoff. ![]() Gizmodo claims that the new owner attempted to return the device to Apple, but no one from the company paid heed. The iPhone’s new owner figured out that it was no normal iPhone 3GS shortly after it was bricked. It’s unclear why so much time elapsed before the news leaked. By the next morning, the iPhone had been remotely disabled. He turned it on long enough to figure out that it belonged to Powell, thanks to the update left on the phone’s Facebook app. The new owner thought it was a regular iPhone 3GS. We’re taking Gizmodo’s word here that the iPhone prototype was not intentionally stolen from Powell, but picked up with innocent intentions. The phone was first picked up by another patron of the bar, and then handed off to an as-yet unnamed person who would end up selling it to Gizmodo. And then he left the Haus, accidentally leaving his iPhone behind. Powell sent an update to his Facebook profile saying how much he liked the beer (unrelated, but funny: a Facebook fan page has sprung up around his story), and updated his Twitter a few times–he was out celebrating his birthday, it turns out. He was carrying a fourth generation iPhone with him, disguised in a case that made it look like a current-gen iPhone 3GS. ![]() On March 18th, an Apple software engineer named Gray Powell went to a bar called Gourmet Haus Staudt in Redwood City, California. ( Disclosure: I used to work for Gizmodo until a few months ago, and Fast Company often syndicates Gizmodo articles as part of an ongoing partnership.) This is the story of how that came to pass–at least to the best of our ability to re-construct it right now. And while you’re likely to read about this coup in mainstream news outlets across the globe, not many of the news outlets writing about Gizmodo would have allowed themselves to procure the device the way the “world’s most fun technology website” did, nor would they have followed up the story in quite the same way. This is a monumental scoop for a gadget blog–any news outlet would be thrilled to unveil such a coveted new device before Steve Jobs had a chance to do it himself. Over the weekend, Gizmodo gained possession of a fourth generation Apple iPhone. ![]()
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