The supposed first looks at the iPhone 12 exterior design are surfacing, with this dummy mockup found on Alibaba pictured this weekend by Macotakara.
Now, it is not necessarily ‘too soon’ for iPhone 12 leaks (the 2020 flagship iPhone expected next fall). The iPhone 11 design was perfectly rendered by Onleaks last year on January 6th 2019.
However, whereas Onleaks has a solid track record of accuracy behind him, ‘Alibaba’ does not. All sorts of nonsense appear on the Chinese shopping website, and it is most likely that what is seen in these pictures is based off previous descriptions from Ming-Chi Kuo rather than independent sourcing.
(Note: Macotakara has a pretty good provenance on their own reporting, but they are pretty clearly not backing up this design with their own sources. They just found the model and wanted to share.)
So, with that huge disclaimer in mind, let’s look at what they have. Face onwards, the design largely resembles the iPhone 11 Pro Max. However, the sides are straight, harkening back to the iPhone 4/4S/5 look rather than the curved edges that have been a staple of the iPhone since 2014.
There is also a strange mark on the side of the device, which could be a new kind of Smart Connector. That being said, smart connectors have shown up on various low-credibility iPhone design mockups for years and have never come to fruition in the final product.
Note the screen diagonal of this 3D-printed item is 6.5-inches, smaller than the rumored 6.7-inches size. This leads even more credence to the idea that it is based on a slightly tweaked schematics of the existing iPhone 11 Pro Max. You can see it, for what it’s worth, in Macotakara’s hands-on video:
