ITWire

It is unclear just who leaked the release date for the next iPhone, but Rene Ritchie over at iMore seems to have the good oil.

We here at iTWire have written long and hard about the upcoming iPhone - we have even dubbed it the iPhone 5, although we tried that name last time and instead received the 4S. Perhaps it might be wiser to use something like iPhone 4S TNG!

Following the furore around the country over Apple's desire to treat the entire world as a single market and claiming the most recent iPad supported 4G (even though the supported frequency was not available for 4G in Australia) it would be a fair bet that the same communications chip will find its way into the 4S TNG.

If Rene Ritchie is to be believed, and most seem to think he has the private phone numbers of some Applers in-the-know, the announcement of a product launch on September 12th and actual release 9 days later is as close as we can get to an official announcement.

Just about every tech company behaves like a national government in the pre-budget weeks - all the significant information is carefully leaked, but officially denied or ignored. That way, if something goes wrong, they're not to blame for our reliance on rumours!

However, given the quite reasonable assumption that the dates are real, Apple has made a very bold announcement to their fan base: "if you buy an existing iPhone prior to September 212st, you're crazy - there's a much better model just down the track."

The retailers must be hating apple right now, especially those that have just recently boosted their inventories of the current iPhones!