A British buyer of Apple's iPhone was surprised to discover his new phone's camera already contained photos - apparently taken in the Chinese factory where it was made.

The pictures showed a woman of Asian appearance, dressed in factory clean room garments, smiling and gesturing in front of other partially-assembled iPhones.

iPhones are manufactured in China by Foxconn.

The iPhone user provided the pictures to the Apple fan website macrumors.com under the screen name "markm49uk".

"Once it had been activated on iTunes I found that the home screen already had a photo set against it," markm49uk wrote.

"It would appear that someone on the production line was having a bit of fun."

A tribute website dedicated to the woman in the photos has appeared at iphonegirl.net.