Tech

Influential Apple blogger 'Boy Genius' says the iPhone 8 mock-up he got is '99% the phone'

Key Points
  • A mock-up of the iPhone 8 that BGR.com said it obtained is "99 percent the phone," the founder and editor-in-chief of Boy Genius Report says.
  • On Tuesday, BGR published photos of the presumed iPhone 8 mock-up provided by a third-party case maker.
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A mock-up of the iPhone 8 that BGR.com said it obtained is "99 percent the phone," the founder and editor-in-chief of Boy Genius Report told CNBC on Wednesday.

"Those pictures, while they're not the real phone — they're based on designs and molds and engineering samples — I would say that's 99 percent the phone. It always looks better than it does in those crappy molds and dummies. But I think that's the phone," Jonathan Geller said on "Squawk Box."

BGR.com says the device on the left is an iPhone 8 mockup. It’s on top of an iPhone 7 Plus on the right.
Source: Zach Epstein, BGR

On Tuesday, BGR published photos of the presumed iPhone 8 mock-up provided by a third-party case maker. BGR said the dummy phone confirmed several months of reports on details of what 's next phone would include such as glass on the front and back and stainless steel edges.

While the dummy isn't meant to be an iPhone clone, BGR said, it still gives consumers an idea of what to expect from Apple's highly anticipated iPhone 8.

CNBC reached out to Apple for comment.

On Friday, Apple mistakenly made firmware for its upcoming HomePod speaker available to the public. The firmware included key details surrounding the upcoming iPhone 8, according to developer Steve Troughton-Smith, who dissected the firmware release.

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Shares of Apple were higher Wednesday, one day after the company reported quarterly earnings and revenue that topped estimates. The stock was surging about 6 percent in premarket trading to record highs as the tech giant sold more iPhones than expected.

Despite expectations for a "lame duck" quarter ahead of the iPhone 8 launch, Apple sold 41 million iPhones during the fiscal third quarter, surpassing 1.2 billion total iPhones sold.

When asked whether a company could come along and threaten Apple, Geller said: "There are always variables."

"What's Apple's strategy has always been is to take a super long view and to let the pieces come together. We're seeing the fruits of their labor from three, four, five years ago, potentially even longer at this point in terms of what they're doing with the phone, the ecosystem, the hardware," he said.

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