Factory Girl: The iPhone Pre-Loaded Pictures Mystery

The MacRumors forum is all abuzz tonight, thanks to a poster who claims his new iPhone came pre-loaded with pictures — seemingly taken inside an iPhone factory somewhere in the Far East.  Here is example:

Comments have ranged from undying love for the girl in the second picture (alternating with "is she older or younger than the girls on the Chinese gymnastic team?" jokes) to snarky amazement that, in some photos, a Windoze PC can clearly be seen — leading, one would suspect, to a new Mac vs. PC commercial in which the Mac guy politely explains he "doesn’t do assembly lines."

But the fundamental question is: are these real iPhone photos, taken inside the iPhone factory, or is this just another shark-attacks-helicopter Net fraud?

We’re not sure.  But the crack research lab at iSmashPhone promptly got on the case, checking the EXIF data of some of the photos that have been posted already.

Notice that in the first photo (original factory photo, from few weeks ago), the image dimensions appear to be correct (1600×1200), but the camera make and model are JPEG.  Moving to picture number 2, make/model now "identify" it as from an iPhone, but the image dimensions are odd (768×1024) and the software field indicates it’s a Quicktime file.  (A still from a video file, shot in portrait mode perhaps?  We wonder.)  Picture 3 has both the right camera info and image size since it was take by our iPhone.

And our carefully arrived-at conclusion?  Heck, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether this is the real deal or Snopes city.  At the very least, the Mystic Nerds of the Blogosphere have a new pinup girl for the week.

[Via MacRumors]