iPhone XS leaked photos seemingly show the phone in the flesh

The iPhone XS is launching just hours from now, but while we’ve seen a handful of renders and pictures of components, we hadn’t seen any leaked photos of the phone in the wild – until now that is.

Posted to Weibo (a Chinese microblogging site) and spotted by The Inquirer, the images (below) show a phone that looks a lot like the iPhone X, complete with a notch at the top, barely any bezel otherwise, and slightly curvy edges.

The phone looks so similar to last year’s model that we can’t be certain that’s not what we’re looking at – although the iPhone XS is rumored to look more or less identical to the iPhone X.

The rumored differences are that it'll be slightly thicker and have a slightly larger rear camera, which isn’t visible here as these shots only show the front of the phone.

So we’d take these photos with a pinch of salt, but whether they’re the real deal or not they’re probably more or less representative of what the iPhone XS will look like.

This could be the iPhone XS. Credit: Weibo / The Inquirer

This could be the iPhone XS. Credit: Weibo / The Inquirer

Less visible changes

And we shouldn't be too disappointed that not much is changing visually, as there should be a few more changes under the hood, including a new chipset, a larger battery and improvements to the camera software.

The biggest changes though could be reserved for the iPhone XS Plus, which looks set to pair an iPhone X-like design with a massive 6.5-inch screen.

We’ll know for sure what’s on offer soon, as Apple is set to announce this year’s iPhones at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm BST Wednesday or 3am AEST on Thursday, and we’ll bring you full details of everything that's announced.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.