October! Not September. Or is it? Fall anyway – that’s pretty sure. Oh, we’re talking about the iPhone 5, and the rumor mill is doing some earthquake-like spasms to reassess everything we thought we knew about the device and its release date.
The new rumor sprung up after an anonymous source spoke with All Things D, claiming that everything we’ve heard about an iPhone 5 launch in September is actually wrong. The launch is happening in October, this source says. He or she has no idea what all that September noise was about.
Well, we do know what the September noise was about – AT&T (T). For some reason, leaked internal memos from AT&T suggested that the company was pulling staff in for a specific week in September that seemed to suggest something the company would need a lot of staff for: namely, a big product launch. And what’s the biggest product launch, due right around that same time? Why, the next iPhone, of course.
But apparently that’s just not the case, according to the source. Here’s a quote from All Things D:
“Sources with knowledge of the situation say reports claiming AT&T has blacked out employee vacations during the last two weeks of September in preparation for the retail debut of the next iPhone are misinformed.
“‘I don’t know why AT&T’s calling for all hands on deck those weeks, but it’s not for an iPhone launch,’ a source familiar with Apple’s plans said.”
Meanwhile, new photos surfaced at Gizmodo that look a fair sight better than the ones circulating the Internet the other day that were reportedly captured from afar on a train near San Francisco. The source of Gizmodo’s photos claim it’s not the iPhone 5, but rather a clone of an iPhone 5 made in a factory with the same design as an iPhone 5 – basically, just the outer case, apparently. And it looks, well, iPhone 4-like. And yet…not.
And that’s about it for new iPhone rumors. All that other weird conflicting stuff remains: that there could be two iPhones, that one could be called the iPhone 4S or something similar, that that phone might be unlocked and designed for prepaid customers. And the stuff that sounds accurate hasn’t been affected. Either or both new iPhones will carry the A5 dual-core processor Apple slapped inside the iPad 2, and that the supposed iPhone 5 will have a bigger screen than the iPhone 4.
But if the new rumor is to be believed, regardless of what we know or what we think we know, we’ll be waiting a little longer to have any real answers.
