A man holds an iPhone 6 in a mobile phone shop in Moscow September 26, 2014.
IN PHOTO: Personal files are now stored using cloud. Too, relationships are built and strengthened via applications in cloud. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

Wild speculations fly when on its release date this year, Apple made the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus available in 16GB, 64GB and 128GB storage configurations.

Whatever happened to the 32GB edition?

Leaked 32GB iPhone 6 Plus

Seemingly the answer was provided by an image leaked via the Chinese social networking site Weibo that showed a China edition of the iPhone 6 Plus having a near-32GB flash drive or exactly 31.5GB of built-in memory.

The picture only led to more questions: Was there a secret iPhone 6 Plus model that Apple has exclusively designed for the Chinese market? Or was the device a prototype that never made it to the mass production phase?

Closer look

Thankfully, an eagle-eye tipster of G4Games decided to zoom in on the scarce details revealed by the Weibo and it turned out that the information gleaned was enough to conclude that a 32GB iPhone 6 is nothing but a hoax.

Indeed when the eyes are opened a bit wider, the text included in the image would reveal two storage details - that is the 31.5GB mentioned above and a 22.9GB space right below. It was hard to tell what the numbers represent as the system language is in Chinese.

Yet according to the informer cited by G4Games, it was clear that the device in subject has two partitions that point to a total storage space of 64GB, which as we all know is one of the three variants for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

In the same report, it was stressed too that a 32GB iPhone 6 model would logically show a usable space of 27 to 28GB. True enough, it was hard to imagine that iOS 8 and other installation and system files can be squeezed on roughly 1.5GB of disk space.

Why the partition?

G4Games explained too that two partitions on the 6 Plus in the image actually makes sense as it would permit easier restoration of the device to factory settings when needed.

So the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus menu this 2014 remains the same - the basic 16GB that leaps huge into 64GB then the whopping 128GB.

Perhaps, Apple would reintroduce the 32GB device build come the iPhone 6S or 7 release date in 2015.