Images Reveal Scrapped iPod touch Prototype with Center Camera

While everyone knows that Apple has been consistently releasing and updating iPhone models, fewer people know about the iPod touch.

Originally released around the time of the first iPhone with similar functionalities, the iPod touch offered users a comparable experience with no cellular data or phone calling features. And now, collectors recently discovered a model of the iPod touch that reflects a very different design that the iPod touch could have embraced.

In May 2020, an Apple prototype collector named Giulio Zompetti posted to Twitter that he found a third-generation iPod touch prototype.

This model has a rear-facing camera interestingly centered in the middle of the back, rather than the side-placed camera that has become the standard for iPhones today.

This third-generation iPod touch had been previously leaked in 2009 while it was still in development. Reports had arisen that technical issues were derailing any attempt to put a camera in the third-gen iPod touch, and thus such an option would have to be withheld.

Later investigations revealed that there was in fact room, with mics and cameras finally being added to fourth-generation iPod touch devices.