Apple's eagerly anticipated 'iPhone' may have made an unscheduled appearance in public this week - on the front page of a Paris newspaper. French publication 20 Minutes on Tuesday splashed a picture of the device on an edition of the paper timed to coincide with the opening of Apple Expo Paris.

French phone-oriented website PDA France snapped the cover, revealing a black, iPod-like handset with numeric pad, call make and break keys and an iPod Shuffle-style clickwheel-esque navigation control. There's what appears to be a memory card slot - Mini SD? - on the device's left-hand side.

Image courtesy PDA France

On the back is a square recess, presumably for the camera, which matches the iSight webcam lens on Apple's latest desktop and notebook Macs.

A hoax? An artist's impression? We're tempted to think either might be the case, but PDA France is adamant that the image was credited by the magazine to Apple itself.

We're still not completely convinced - it's easy enough to create a fake magazine front page and add such touches for verisimilitude.

The cover was published before Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the company's latest iPod designs and the iTV set-top box. It had been speculated in some quarters that the company would also show off the much-rumoured iPhone, though in the end, no such revelation was made. ®