Where have we heard this story? Guy walks into a bar and hours later walks out, leaving behind a prototype smartphone. It’s already happened twice with Apple iPhones and now appears to have repeated itself with a LG Nexus 4.
It all happened at the 500 Club in San Francisco. A bartender found the lost device last month. He thought little of it at first as about 20 phones get left behind every week. But this one went unclaimed. Locked and without SIM card, the bartender had no way to identify who it might belong to. He recognized that the ‘not for sale’ sticker and Google logo on the back made it more unusual as well. Things got interesting when he showed it to someone who recognized it as the yet-to-be-announced LG Nexus 4.
From there, the story involves Google’s security team, a wild goose chase, police in riot gear, lawyers, and offers of free phones in exchange for keeping the story quiet. Read the Wired article for a story that reads like a movie script.
The morale of the story: Unreleased smartphones and bars don’t mix.
Read more: Wired