Apple Tested Camera-equipped iPod Touch Before Dropping the Feature

From DailyTech: Despite an intense focus on secrecy, Apple products often leak. The popularity of Apple's mobile devices, coupled with the fact that real leaks exist, has driven some to fabricate iPod and iPhone rumors in a ploy for attention. It has become hard enough to distinguish from fact and fantasy when it comes to Apple, to the extent that even legitimate leaks seem unbelievable.
That appears to be the case with the reported leak of an iPod Touch third generation prototype with a camera module. The radio show Covino & Rich first aired the leaked photos. It now appears these leaked photos were for real.

Comparing them with an iFixit teardown of the newly released third generation Touch, there is ample photographic evidence that the rumor was, in fact, authentic. The tear down reveals an identical layout, including almost all of the same circuit boards, with one crucial difference -- the release version has no camera. Both the leaked prototype and the release version differ significantly in circuit board layout to the second generation Touch, further strengthening the argument for the images' validity.

For whatever reason, Apple appears to have late in the development process yanked the camera feature. While the new nanos received cameras, as predicted, the Touch was left still camera-less.

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