ITWire

When you’re the CFO of Verizon, and your name’s Fran Shammo, chances are that you’ve got some ammo when it comes to foreknowledge of when the next new iPhone may – or may not – appear.

The thing is, when you’re talking iDevices, you’ve got to be careful, lest you raise the wrath of Apple’s legal angry-bird eagles – or perhaps find your carrier no longer carrying Apple’s iDevice iExtraordinaire.

Although one of the many phone blogs shamelessly claimed a global exclusive with an August 7 launch date, an exclusive that will surely come to sorely bite them squarely in the backside should the day come and go with no new iPhone, the week’s news has been all about Fran Shammo’s suggestion of a “big smartphone” coming in the fourth quarter, with that smartphone expected to be iBigger than ever.

Couple this with ever more Chinese manufacturers taking a punt on creating iPhone 5 cases, even though the precise design is still unknown – at least on an official basis, and endless rumours pontificating on the likelihood of:

- 4G LTE,
- NFC,
- a headphone socket on the base of the iPhone rather than the top,
- a smaller dock-connector,
- a 4-inch “in-cell” display that’s thinner than ever with
- 16:9 aspect ratio
- Retina-class display,
- the most powerful Li-ion battery chemistry yet,
- an A6 quad-core processor with
- multi-core graphics,
- the possibility of larger 128GB storage sizes
- 1GB RAM and more, one thing’s for certain…

Which is that people really, really, REALLY want to know about the iPhone 5, and not having anything official confirmed by Apple is driving some people CrAzY!

Then there’s speculation over whether the iPhone 5 has reached the production stage as yet, with claims from the geniuses at the Boy Genius Report (BGR) that “final design verification” stage is yet to take place, something of prime importance should any sooner rather than later release appear.

If BGR is correct, then there’s no way an August 7 date is real, making Shammo’s suggestion all the more believable.

Of course there’s also the question of what happens once the iPhone 5 launches, with iCloud to surely be under its biggest load ever, a Siri that might be more powerful yet under the greatest load it has ever been under, tight availability as people clamour for a device that is wanted by millions in each country, let alone states or cities… and it’s a recipe for the world’s biggest iFrenzy of Jesus-Phonian proportions.

So, with August 7 drawing ever nearer, and no surprise leaks or mystery Apple shipments in large numbers from China, the likelihood of a fourth quarter surprise becomes ever more real, with August 7 seeming more and more like it may have been naught but lies.