iPhone 5 Existed As A Prototype, Was Scrapped Before iPhone 4S Announcement [REPORT]

Despite countless rumors and cases floating around for the iPhone 5, Apple surprised everyone at their “Let’s Talk iPhone” event with the same-old-design iphone 4S.

If all the previous reports we’ve covered here at Virtual Experts are to be believed then the iphone 5 was all set to be a done deal, and would’ve been a true successor to the iPhone 4, bringing an all-new-design and a bunch of other anticipated features to the roster.

The iPhone 4S was released instead, which according to some; is a mere upgrade over the iPhone 4 itself. And we do agree with all those who are thinking in that direction; apart from a dual core processor and a better camera, and oh, Siri, we didn’t get that much to cherish or play around with.

According to a new report which was published by Business Insider a while back, the iPhone 5 was real, and according to their trusted source, which Business Insider claims to have ‘been right about future Apple products in the past’ says that the iPhone 5 did not go into production, and the said device was rather ‘scrapped’ a few months before the iPhone 4S was officially unveiled to the world by Apple. And to set fire to the whole ordeal, the iPhone 5 prototype existed and their source got to play around with it for a good amount of time. Surprised? We are too.

Our source said that Apple engineers he knows thought until about three months before the iPhone 4S was released, that a new fully re-designed iPhone was going to be Apple’s next big announcement.

This source said that he spent about two weeks with one prototype version of this phone.

Keeping in mind all of the previous rumors and reports which we’ve crossed, covered or dissected; we also have mixed opinions whether the iPhone 5 was real or not. Regardless of all that, Business Insider sums it up in an evasive fashion:

We have not been able to verify what he told us with a second source.  So we’re still treating these details as rumors. You should probably still read this post with a nice fat dose of salt.

The major design changes we might have seen in the iPhone 5 would be the all-time-famous tear drop design, and our favorite; a larger screen coupled with a gesture based home button. All the aforementioned features clearly didn’t land in on the iPhone 4S.

According to another report which we covered a while back, its being said that Steve Jobs’ last project which he worked on before dying wasn’t the iPhone 4S, instead it was the iPhone 5. So, is Apple leaving the big surprise for the year to come? Maybe.

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Ice Cream Sandwich’s Facial Unlocking Can Be Beaten By A Photo Instead Of A Real Face [VIDEO]

Google has a lot riding on Android 4.0, A.K.A. Ice Cream Sandwich. The first release of Android to combine the chaos of all previous releases of the mobile operating system with the flair of Honeycomb, 4.0 will be the first version of Android to be used on both smartphones and tablets.

Aesthetics isn’t the only thing to change in Ice Cream Sandwich, and Google has added more than a few new features, apps and details to its already popular OS. One of those additions is a new way of unlocking the device using just your face. The problem though, is that your face isn’t always the most secure thing to use as a key for accessing your phone or tablet.

One video has popped up on SoyaCincau.com shows off just how easy facial recognition is to fool

As many had been speculating since the Samsung Galaxy Nexus announcement, it is indeed possible to trick an Ice Cream Sandwich device into letting you in just by holding a photograph of its owner up to the camera.

The video was recorded at a recent Samsung trade show, using one of their Galaxy Nexus handsets. Just to add a little flair to proceedings, the photo used to trick the unlocking software was being displayed on a Samsung Galaxy Note, Maybe it’s that giant, pixel-laden screen that makes the whole thing possible!?

The question we’re left asking here is a simple one – is facial recognition actually any more secure than a good old password or PIN? If this video is to be believed, then the answer has to be a resounding ‘no,’ and we’re not even sure we’d bother using it anyway. While we’ve not tried it ourselves, and obviously don’t know just how quickly the recognition works, we can’t see it being any quicker than pressing a few virtual buttons on-screen.

So, if facial recognition isn’t any more secure than a password or a PIN, and it presumably isn’t any quicker than either, we do struggle to work out why we would want to use it. We’re all for Google adding bells and whistles to Android, but it would help if they were something we’d want to use, too.

Will you be using facial recognition as a way of securing your data, or are the old fashioned ways more your kind of thing?