Oh, man, this is turning into the richest iPhone rumor season ever. The iPhone 5C with plastic color backs? Check. iPhone 5S? You betcha. A gold anodized iPhone 5S? Heck yeah. A super fast processor? According to a tweet, sure! And now we have another possibility straight from Japan, a SIM tray that is “gunmetal gray,” and it could indicate that Apple has another color in the works.
Or it could indicate that an un-anodized iPhone SIM tray escaped into the wild, which would mean that there isn't anything to this story. We should note, though, that the site that published the photographs is ASCII Plus, the same site that started the flood of gold-anodized iPhone photographs that have taken the tech press by storm.
The new story is that ASCII Plus got a hold of another SIM tray (Google Translation) this one a gunmetal gray. The SIM tray, which shows on the edge of Apple's iPhone line, doesn't match any of the colors that have already been leaked.
To wit:
ASCII Plus Image of three iPhone 5S Colors and a Gunmetal Blue
On the one hand, that could mean that Apple has a fourth color on tap for the September 10th media event the company is expected to hold. On the other hand, it could be a one-off, a cast-off, a throw-away, or simply an unfinished tray that hasn't been anodized yet.
Accordingly, don't make too much of this rumor just yet. It would be silly to ignore it (assuming you like to follow Apple rumors), but until we start seeing leaked images of iPhone 5S backs or completed iPhone 5Ss that match this color, I wouldn't bet on this one.
A side note: one of the things I love about this story is the string of utter nonsense Google Translate made of the Japanese text. Here's a sample I tweeted earlier:
There is a nano-SIM tray object iPhone5S basis of (?) Around while being information that has flowed to the earliest, to reach the last or Opium or tail touching. Two.
That's the most poetic string of gibberish I've encountered in a while.