I see your point and it makes a lot of sense to me. It could very well be that I’ve been had and this guy just made it all up (why he would do this though I got no clue). But as I said in reply to a comment on the Pre post, it also makes sense that these guys do know, as they need to get trained on the devices before they get released in order to better make sales (particularly with the big devices like the Pre, iPhone and BlackBerry Storm). Also, the guy said he saw one in the “wild” in NYC so perhaps some high exec somewhere already has one (also a possibility as these things go through a lot of testing before seeing the hands of the consumer, and I highly doubt they just test them in a dark room in Cupertino, California (Apple’s HQ) ). He also may have seen info on new devices from an inventory system in the store (again, possible as he does work at Best Buy and employees have access to that info).

That’s why I stressed this was a RUMOR, I can’t say whether it will actually happen until some exec from Apple announces it to the world and says it’s coming. I’m only writing about this because I think it is interesting (the iPhone topic generally is), and thought our readers would like to be up to date on what might be coming soon (the second half of the post is a summation of other rumors of a new iPhone found across the web).

Listen, Apple is having their WWDC conf on June 8th (the place they announced the iPhone 3G last year, I btw updated the end of the post with this info), so I guess that will be a nice indication of what’s coming (or not coming)

Best,

–Eli

Think about it. There are hundreds of Best Buy stores around the country. The guys selling the phones are as worthless as the ones in the back selling the PC’s when it comes to knowing what they are talking about. There are thousands of associates selling phones at Best Buy across this country. And you found the one that saw the new iPhone in person despite the great lengths that Apple and AT&T have gone to keep the details secret. Never mind why they would be telling an even larger group of sales people while trying to keep the secret.

One need only look at any other carrier (Sprint, for example) for how “secrets” quickly get out once the end-sales people are told about it…..which is precisely why none of the end sales people have been told the new iPhone yet. In short, they can’t be trusted. The guy selling you phones at Best Buy isn’t high enough up in the food chain to get privileged information like this until right before launch. The announcement is at least 6-8 weeks out and actual availability may be one to three months after that, so I guarantee you they aren’t ready to share privileged info with the end sales guys at any retail shop.

Once the sales folks are told, you will see dozens of the same reports cropping up every where and with enough consistencies between them to make them fairly accurate. But that isn’t happening yet. So I’m not buying your Best Buy source as anything but a mean person playing on your willingness to believe him. His rumors are no more meaningful that the countless others out there talking about the same features. You’ve been had.