The iPhone 5 is rumored to be packing several upgrades from its predecessors, one of which is a bump up to an 8-megapixel camera. Today an image that very well could have been taken with that camera has surfaced online. Unearthed by the folks at Pocketnow, the image's EXIF data reveals that although this photo has been cropped to a resolution of 2235x2291, the original measured 3264x2448. That works out to around 8 megapixels, aka the same resolution expected to be found in the new iPhone. Despite the fact that the EXIF data claims that the photo was taken with an iPhone 4, we know that the current iPhone's 5-megapixel wouldn't be able to capture this image. The EXIF data also shows that the image was shot on Apple's campus.

So is this photo the real deal? Although it's possible to alter an image's EXIF data, the evidence seems to point to the image being legit. It's not really clear why an Apple employee may have decided to upload a photo taken with an iPhone 5 to a public image-sharing site, but hey, we're not ones to complain about getting an early look at a highly-anticipated smartphone's new camera. Apple has yet to announce when the iPhone 5 will go on sale — or even acknowledge that the device actually exists, for that matter — but the rumor mill believes that the device could be launching early next month. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The photo has been pulled from Flickr.

Via Pocketnow, MacRumors