Internally, the gold iPhone 5s was jokingly referred to as ‘The Kardashian Phone’ by some Apple employees. This fact was tweeted out by the NYT’s Nick Bilton today and we confirmed the nickname with our sources. Yes, we asked this question of our sources.

Apparently this was not a serious ‘code name’ or anything, just an internal joke. Kim Kardashian, of course, has a well-known connection to gold iPhones. The reality star actually had an iPhone 5 that was anodized gold long before Apple’s ‘champagne’ device hit the market, as you can see in the image below.

The thing is, it’s a joke right? I’m sure that people in Apple know Kim loves a gold iPhone just as much as the rest of us. It was a fairly unpopular stance for quite a while to say that the gold iPhone might actually be…pretty hot.

But the fact is that the gold iPhone was easily the most sought-after model at launch. Before launch, everyone laughed about the thought of a glossy, sickly gold iPhone 5s. After launch, the opinions were almost universally the opposite; even those that didn’t necessarily love the gold acknowledged that it wasn’t bad after all.

I love my gold iPhone 5 by http://t.co/x14clif7 — thanks @boygenius http://t.co/4wxmwb7T

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) December 7, 2012

At this point, we don’t know if Kim actually has a new gold 5s, they’re still in fairly short supply. It’s possible that Kim is using a gold iPhone 5s inside a black case in the famous bathing suit image above. We’ll leave it for a site in tune with the celebrity iPhone news to decipher. BGR perhaps? BGR actually says Kim is using a black iPhone 5 now. Stay tuned as we bring you the latest in Kim Kardashian iPhone news.

Image Credit: Kim Kardashian.

@kimkardashian Do you own a gold iPhone 5s?

— Alexia Tsotsis (@alexia) October 18, 2013