New ‘leaked’ photos of a powered on iPhone 7 are nonsense – here’s why

Thought you were going to get through a day without a new iPhone 7 ‘leak’? Think again – and things are getting more unreliable by the second.
Images posted to Weibo and tweeted by anonymous Twitter user The Malignant claim to show a powered on model of Apple’s forthcoming handset.
What apparently makes these shots newsworthy is that they appear to show a real working unit, rather than just a dummy model – images of which have been flooding the internet in recent weeks.
https://twitter.com/statuses/755689197957185536
Except they’re nothing of the sort.
Noted phone blogger Steve Hemmerstoffer rightly points out the falsehood on Twitter, highlighting that the ‘powered on’ phone depicted in the comparative images is in fact a current-generation iPhone 6S.
The second device lying screen-down in the snaps is likely to be a dummy iPhone 7, but as you can see, it’s hardly in working order.
Dummy units are made by manufacturers not affiliated with Apple and are based on the same specifications and schematics as the real phone.
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As the iPhone 7 launch nears, we’re seeing more and more ‘handsets’ appear in leaked photos and videos, though many deserve to be treated with the utmost scepticism.
Of course, this isn’t the only iPhone 7 leak we’ve been graced with today. Elsewhere a high-definition video claiming to compare the iPhone 7 with its predecessor, the iPhone 6S, was published by a manufacturer of audio accessories.
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The unit in the video is likely one of the dummy units we mentioned earlier, but the video is notable for giving us a high-res look at what the new handset could look like.
Apple is expected to officially launch the iPhone 7 in early-September, and you can rest assured there’ll be plenty more leaks in the mean time.
WATCH: iPhone 7: Everything we know so far
What do you make of these latest leaks? Let us know in the comments.