A young woman worker with a Shenzhen factory contracted for American company Apple Inc. became one of the most-discussed figures on an overseas forum over the past days.

Interest surged after an iPhone user in Britain found the young woman's picture on the home screen of his just activated handset.

The British iPhone user, who named himself as markm49uk on www.macrumors.com, posted three images of the woman worker posing with a big smile and "victory" signs in front of an assembly line in his new iPhone in a thread on the forum Aug. 20, according to a report on www.sina.com yesterday.

Markm49uk said he came across the three pictures on the home screen of his new iPhone handset which he had just received.

He wrote in the thread: "Not sure if this is or is not the 'norm' but I just received my brand-new iPhone here in the U.K. and once it had been activated on iTunes I found that the home screen (the screen you can personalize with a photo) already had a photo set against it !!!! It would appear that someone on the production line was having a bit of fun has anyone else found this?"

The young woman was assumed to be an assembly worker with the Longgang-based Foxconn, which has been an OEM factory for Apple Inc. as the producer of its 3G handset iPhone and other product lines of iPod, the Sina.com report said.

The images were said to be a regular quality test of the handset's built-in camera, which the assembly workers forgot to delete before packing it for shipment.

A call to Foxconn was not returned.

The thread attracted more than 300 replies from iPhone buffs around the world in four days, with some calling it a "nice find," or saying it was "nice" to see that the worker was having "some fun in the drab (field) of assembling technology."

An Internet user has even set up a blog dedicated to the finding at www.iphonegirl.net, inviting other iPhone users around the world to share the findings on their handsets if there are any. (Wei Jie)