iPhone 5 Sushi Snap? Apple Engineer’s Lunch Photo Fuels Speculation

Evidence is mounting that a photo of a plate of sushi — of all things — may have been taken by Apple’s next-generation iPhone.
The photo would be one of the first iPhone 5 photos to reach the public as the device’s launch approaches.
The photo, titled “lunch” and discovered by PocketNow, was found on the Flickr account of Apple software engineer Anton D’Auria. While the photo looks like a simple plate of sushi, its EXIF data reveals that there is more to this photo than meets the eye.

SEE ALSO: iPhone 5 Rumor Roundup [INFOGRAPHIC] The EXIF data says the photo was taken with an iPhone 4, but several things don’t fit with what we know about that version of the iPhone. First, the original picture was taken with a 3264×2448 pixel resolution (approximately 8 megapixels) and cropped to 2235×2291 (approximately 5 megapixels). The iPhone 4 is a 5 megapixel device, so it wouldn’t be capable of taking a 3264×2448 photo.
The second piece of evidence is that the photo was taken with a 4.3mm f/2.4 lens. The iPhone 4 has a 3.85mm f/2.8 lens.
The photo was also likely taken at Apple HQ. Its GPS data pinpoints the photo’s origin to 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino, CA — which, as every geek knows, happens to be the address of Apple headquarters.
D’Auria’s Flickr account has since been made private, but the image is already widely available online. While it’s possible the image is a fake (EXIF data can be altered rather easily), we doubt an Apple engineer would make so many EXIF changes to an iPhone 4 picture. If the photo is indeed from an iPhone 5, expect an 8MP camera with the quality of a point-and-shoot on iPhones in the next month or so.