An alleged early iPhone X prototype has surfaced online, offering a look at a design path Apple apparently explored before settling on the final version of the iPhone X that reached the market. The images were shared by leaker Majin, who said the prototype was produced around May 2017.
What makes the device stand out is how different it looks from the shipping model. According to the leak, the phone used a sandblasted aluminum body and placed rear Touch ID on the back, a direction Apple ultimately abandoned. On the front, the design is described as an unconventional full-screen layout that feels closer to phones like Sony Xperia models or the Smartisan Pro 2 than to the iPhone X people actually remember.
The prototype is also said to have included a white front panel, which gives the device an even more experimental look in hindsight. That detail alone makes the leaked hardware feel like part of a broader phase when Apple was still testing how far it wanted to push the next major iPhone redesign.
Majin’s post reportedly also shows that Apple had already prepared a guide card for this version of the phone, suggesting the concept had advanced beyond a rough internal sketch. Even so, Apple is said to have scrapped the design before launch and moved on to the iPhone X format the market eventually got.
Leaks like this don’t rewrite product history, but they do make the development process easier to picture. The takeaway here isn’t that Apple almost released this exact phone tomorrow; it’s that the road to the iPhone X seems to have included much more visible debate around fingerprint placement, front-panel styling, and materials than the final product ever revealed in public.
