The Apple rumor mill is a-churning yet again, and this time it’s not another breathless bit of speculation about the newest version of the iPhone: A report out of China claims that the smartphone giant sent anywhere between five and eight million shoddy iPhones back to its manufacturer, Foxconn, out of concerns that the phones weren’t up to snuff.

The Register cites a report in China Business, which has been translated a few times and as such, all things linked to the report must be taken with a hefty grain of salt at hand.

According to the tale spreading around the tech world, an anonymous Foxconn staffer got chatty and said millions of phones were rejected by Apple “due to appearance of substandard or dysfunctional problems.”

It’s unclear which version of the iPhone was affected, but since the devices cost Foxconn about $200 each to manufacture, the company is looking at a hit of upwards of $1.5 billion to make it up.

If it turns out that the iPhone 5 was involved or the still on sale iPhone 4S, consumers could be facing a delay in getting their hands on them as Apple’s supply chain might take a two- to three-week hit.

There’s also the possibility that the shoddy phones were part of an even newer, and therefore not even on the market iteration of the iPhone, which could cause Apple to delay its release. That being said, we’re guessing that if there were ever millions of an unreleased iPhone coming off the line at a factory, someone would’ve already snapped and leaked a pic.

Report: Apple returned 8M shoddy iPhones to Foxconn [The Register]

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