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An ebay listed appeared yesterday for a ‘black prototype iPhone 4' and the bidding was almost at one million dollars before the auction was pulled. Many readers will remember the Gizmodo fiasco, when they paid $5,000 to get access to a prototype version of the iPhone 4.
The auction started slowly, with people bidding two thousand, then four thousand dollars a time, then the bidding went berserk. The device had an invalid serial number and it had a unique tracking code etched into the front. According to the listing, the phone worked, but wouldn't activate.
While initially connections were made with the auction and the ‘missing iphone 4 prototype', the phones were not the same.
Why would anyone pay almost 1 million dollars for a prototype? Well it could be that someone in Apple started bidding incredibly high amounts of money to keep the phone away from a genuine source, while they contacted ebay to get information on the seller, but whatever happened, the auction was pulled from display.
The phone had no volume control buttons and at the rear, all the details and numbers were replaced with ‘x' characters.
“I am a licensed cell phone repairman, this iPhone was bought from a person who really didn't know who he had,” said the eBay seller “jtmaxo.” “He couldn't activate it so just simply wanted to sell it. This iPhone was bought as for parts only. As far as the legality part – phone was bought legally. Good luck.”
Kitguru says: It appears that the phone may already be winging its way back to Apple.
Fake bids? Im surprised that crossed noones minds… instead we get all this conspiracy stuff to do with apple.. wow
@ P1n3apqlExpr3ss
wasnt that mentioned in the article? “Well it could be that someone in Apple started bidding incredibly high amounts of money to keep the phone away from a genuine source” ?
You can be sure Apple stopped this and the guy selling it has been funded the money he paid for it in exchange. I would also assume that the person he bought it from is also now under investigation
@Thomas
Thats not the same as joe blogs bidding on the item just to be a c**k and mess with the auction, thats apple trying to protect their IP
Yeah I see what you mean. you mean scam bidding just to rise the price to get news sites to link to it? Wonder if apple did get it shut down, or if the seller just closed the auction himself.