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Seems our friend Steve Troughton-Smith is trying to make a name for himself. You might remember that he was the developer who successfully tethered his iPhone to his notebook after hacking around with iPhone OS 3.0 beta. Continuing from there, he’s now found five completely new device references in the beta OS. He believes them to be two new iPhone models, an iPod touch model and two other unknown devices.

He first reported this finding to ArsTechnica, which was later confirmed by The Boy Genius Report.  Here’s what he found:

The file, /System/Library/AppleUSBDevice/USBDeviceConfiguration.plist, lists details about the USB configuration of the various iPhone and iPod touch models, as well as the device ID and product names. The same file in iPhone OS 2.2.1 lists the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and first- and second-gen iPod touches, referred to as iPhone1,1; iPhone1,2; iPod1,1; and iPod2,1 respectively.

The new references are iPhone 2,1; iPhone3,1; iPod3,1; iFPGA; and iProd0,1.  iPhone2,1 has been showing up in numerous places on the web since late last year. What’s interesting is that this implies two still unannounced iPhone models. These references do not distinguish between storage capacity, only generation. The original iPhone was iPhone1,1, while iPhone 3G is known as iPhone1,2.

I could be reading into this, but does this mean Apple is planning to release a major update to the iPhone? The 3G wasn’t significant enough to change the first part of the model number, but now there are two models with higher first digits. I see two possibilities. Apple may split the iPhone into two distinct new models. I don’t want to say it, but I will, the 3rd gen iPhone and an iPhone mini. It also could just be that Apple was experimenting with a device but decided to go in a different direction (with a different model reference).

And what about these other devices? Smith seems to think that the iFPGA is not intended to be used by golfers, nor released at all. The iProd0,1? Probably not a cattle prod, but it could be that Apple Tablet we’ve been hearing about. 0,1 would seem to indicate that it’s not yet ready for production, though.

Let the speculation begin. I think these represent Apple skipping one iPhone revision (sorry I don’t believe the iPhone mini), a new iPod touch and sadly, an Apple Tablet. I don’t want to see it happen this way, but I have a feeling it might. I’d much rather see a MacBook touch without a keyboard from Apple, but only time will tell what’s really going on here. So let’s hear what you make of this in the comments.