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Apple is apparently hard at work cooking up what will become the successor to the iPhone 3G S. In China, an army of parts designers are working on the phone's circuit boards and components. Leading them is Foxconn in Shenzhen, a city in the industry-heavy Guangdong province near Hong Kong.

At Foxconn, a 25-year-old college graduate working in product communications, Yong Sun Dan, was in charge of the phone's prototypes. On Thursday, July 9, he set out to pick up 16 prototype units from the factory. He would later discover that one was missing according to DigitalBeat. His theory was that he left it at the factory. On Monday, July 13 he unhappily reported it to his boss.

Two days later, three Foxconn employees broke into his apartment and searched it. Sun, according to an IM exchange, also may have been detained and physically abused during the search.

The story came to an end of Thursday at 3 a.m. when Yong Sun Dan leapt from the window of his apartment building to his death. The tragic story showcases the potentially deadly game of intrigue and leaks that blog sites play. On the other side of the aisle, it shows the tremendous pressure that manufacturers like Foxconn feel about defending the secrecy of its star products.