robjn

They obviously are not going to make any money off of a product they have only just started assembling.

Perhaps they have invested more money than usual in gearing up for assembly of three new iPhones.

This is all nonsense! The article should have been written with a tone that clearly exposes it as nonsense.

The decision about when to "reveal" the new phone is known only within Apple. Suppliers simple don't need to know this.

The claim that the design is unfinished is absurd. It would have likely been mostly finalized two years ago!

It is unlikely that the new device with have TouchID because the new technology would only be adopted if it were better.

When this new phone is released a certain segment of the media will claim that TouchID is not there because Apple failed to do it and that the new technology is nothing but a poor compromise - these articles have probably already been written!

gatorguy said:

For what you claim is a simple mistake it seems to happen regularly. You would think Apple might have caught on by now and taken steps to avoid it if it was "unintentional" eh? Seems very un-Apple-y to allow a mistake to be repeated. One of the several reasons I don't think it's a mistake. 

https://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/01/14/how-apples-controlled-leak-policy-keeps-us-hooked/

Apple provides pre-release software for testing. This software mostly contains features that were pre-announced at WWDC and sometimes minor unannounced software changes. These software releases are not "leaks". These public beta software packages are usually carefully stripped of any references to future products. In this case the data that needed to be stripped was flagged for this purpose but the stripping process was not actually implemented.

These flags in the code demonstrate Apple's intent to keep these revealing data points secret.

What if there are two lasers on each phone?

One front facing for PearlID.

One rear facing for enhanced camera/AR capability.

The analysts here are assuming there is one laser on the device.

With an expanded line they really should drop all the numbers.
The marketing names should be:

iPhone
iPhone Plus
iPhone Pro (or less possibly? iPhone Edition)

Of course, for documentation and with accessory compatibility, they will need to differentiate with "late 2017" or a "generation" number.

In future years the line could be further expanded to have an iPhone, iPhone Pro, iPhone Edition and a new small phone or possibly Pro and/or Edition models at different sizes.