We’re not sure how we (and everyone else) missed this one. It appears that Apple is making a new version of the iPhone 4. The new hardware number appeared in iOS device downloads on September 19th but hasn’t shown up yet for developers yet:
It is hard to tell what this device is yet. It could be an internal hardware processor update…something like the iPad 2,4 we saw this year that includes a lower-power A5 processor. It could also be a combo phone rather than the two separate CDMA and GSM models originally produced. Alternatively, maybe Apple is throwing T-Mobile and its AWS 4G network a bone? Or, perhaps most interestingly, it could be an iPhone 4 updated with new basebands that could take it to places like China Mobile and its 600 million subscribers. Apple would likely be able to hit more of the market in China with a lower-priced iPhone 4.
Russian website AppStudio believes it is the newer version of the iPhone 4, similar to the iPad 2,4 update.
The iPhone3,2 was first seen at the same time as the iPhone 3,3 that turned out to be the Verizon iPhone 4 (early 2011), which would seem to reduce the possibility of it just being a newer version of the iPhone 4.
