The next-gen iPhones buttons, wires, cables and screens have been torn apart in a candid photo shoot, thanks to this cheeky French site.

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Most excitingly, the pictures show the protective metal backing for the new 4-inch screen. Since the internal components of the iPhone are a total and utter mystery, despite the fact that we now have cold, hard evidence of what the pieces look like, we can only speculate as to what the metal screen shield will do. Will it safeguard the phone from pieces that overheat? Will it protect the user from low-level radiation? Who the hell knows?! That’s why we’re speculating.

And is that an image of the new Nano-SIM card slot which was also leaked earlier this week? Possibly.

We think that the strange mess of plastic and cameras is a new and hopefully beefed up and front-facing iSight component, combined with a dual flash. These rumours seem true, based on the millions of reports circulating the interwebs.

The images are said to have been originally leaked from this site, but all requests now redirect to a “Lion Server” page. It’s a scant few weeks now, we think, until the next-gen iPhone sprays itself into our atmosphere, like a fine mist of steel and glass.

[Image credit]