On Thursday afternoon, a verified China Telecom account on the Weibo microblog posted an ad for advance orders of the iPhone 5S and 5C — the phones we expect Apple to announce next week.
While the post was swiftly withdrawn, a journalist at the Wall Street Journal spotted — and screen grabbed — the web page. It’s not clear if this was a genuine mistake or some kind of marketing stunt. But if the leaked page is accurate, it suggests that the iPhone 5C has a coloured back which isn’t dissimilar to the current iPhone, save for a solid block of colour on the back panel. Though, that said, it’s tough to tell, given the low resolution of the image issued by the Wall Street Journal.
Apparently, the page said that China will be one of the first markets to receive the new phones too. If that’s the case — and a specific Chinese launch event suggests it might be — it’s a departure for Apple, which has usually delayed shipping to China. These are still all ifs at this stage though, so it’s fortunate that we don’t have long to wait until we find out for sure what Apple has up its sleeve. [Wall Street Journal]