iPhone 4G Spotted, Again

Inside Apple's iPad: FCC Teardown Photos

About two months after an Apple engineer left one on a barstool in California, another iPhone 4G appears to have been spotted.

Bloggers at the Vietnamese tech site Taoviet posted pictures this week of a device that's labeled APL0398, and is similar to the phone lost in March by Apple's Gray Powell.

Taoviet's photos show a complete teardown of the alleged iPhone 4G, including shots of its internal, system-on-a-chip. Apple, for its part, has not confirmed the pictures' authenticity.

There's also no word on whether Apple plans to take any legal action against Taoviet for publishing the images. The company filed a criminal complaint against the Gizmodo blogger who obtained TK's lost iPhone 4G and posted a story about it, along with pictures. The investigation remains ongoing.

It's not known how Taoviet came across the supposed iPhone 4G.

Apple, meanwhile could use the publicity that's being generated by the iPhone 4G sightings. New figures from research group NPD show that phones based on Google's Android operating system surpassed the iPhone in sales in the most recent quarter.

Android phones leapfrogged the iPhone in the first quarter to grab a 28% share of the market, according to NPD. The iPhone's share stood at 21%, while category leader Research In Motion, with its Blackberry, took a 36% stake.

Competition in the smartphone market will further heat up when Microsoft introduces its Windows Phone 7 devices later this year. Like the KIN phones Microsoft introduced last week, Windows Phone 7 devices will emphasize social networking and messaging tools.