Unreleased iPod touch shell with 30-pin Dock Connector, iPhone 5 design appears online

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Apple iPhone 5
Apple iPhone 5 (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • The shell of an unreleased iPod touch has appeared in new photos.
  • The device is said to be a fifth-gen iPod touch.

Apple designs all kinds of things that never get released and one of them appears to be an iPod touch that looked like an iPhone 5 – complete with chamfered edges.

Leaked by someone with a decent track record in the form of Twitter user Mr.White, the device doesn't have an Apple logo on the back but it does have the telltale shape of one of the best-lookig iPhones ever – iPhone 5. Except this shell has a space for the larger-than-life 30-pin Dock Connector whereas iPhone 5 famously ushered in the Lightning connect we still use today.

https://twitter.com/laobaiTD/status/1402835983788249088

The fifth-generation iPod touch we ultimately received arrived in 2012 and featured curved edges similar to those that ended up being part of the iPhone 6 design a couple years later.

As we reach the middle of 2021, the current iPod touch is almost a forgotten product. It hasn't seen a refresh in more than two years and finding it on apple.com takes more than a few clicks. As Apple moves certain iPhones into cheaper and cheaper categories, the role of the humble iPod touch isn't clear.

The current iPod touch 7 is still a good device for those who want to give juds a way to watch their shows, though. For everyone else, the best iPhone deals are a better option.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.