upcoming cheap Low-Cost iPhone

There's more. Intrigued by the possibility of these plastic shells for low-cost iPhones, MacRumors commissioned Federico Ciccarese to create digital renderings of the budget iPhone.

Take a look below, complete with iOS 7 onscreen. (These renderings don't include the blue version of the rumored cheap iPhone.)



Ciccarese took the shapes of the plastic shells in the leaked photos and fleshed them out into entire handsets. The overall result looks similar to an iPhone 5 covered in plastic.

Ciccarese estimates the thickness of the new iPhone 5 at 8.5 millimeters, almost a millimeter thicker than the current iPhone 5, which measures 7.6 mm thick. In his vision of a low-cost iPhone, rectangular volume controls replace the round buttons with the "plus" and "minus" symbols that are reminiscent of Leica cameras.



While these are lovely renderings, they are simply guesswork based on leaked photos that may or may not resemble the final product. We most likely won't have a better idea until September, when some analysts have predicted this entry-level iPhone may see the light of day.

The price could be around $300 — less than half of that of the standard iPhone, which now costs $649 unlocked.