iPhone 5 Release Date: Here Is What You Can Expect From Apple's Next Generation Device

By Donovan Jackson | Sep 11, 2012 11:29 AM EDT

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The iPhone 5 is coming. Apple will be holding a special media event in San Francisco tomorrow. After all of the many rumors and leaked pictures have surfaced, here is what we can expect from Apple tomorrow.

Judging from the picture that Apple recently released with the number 12 secretly displaying the number 5 at the same time, we can assume that the company will be releasing the sixth generation of the iPhone device.

The phone should be very similar to the iPhone 4 except it will be slimmer and have a thinner yet larger screen and a two-tone body with a metal backside.

The device's display is expected to measure 4 inches instead of 3.5 inches in diagonal, and it will be elongated, so that the screen assumes a video-friendly 16x9 aspect ratio. Pixel counters make note: Instead of 960 x 640, it is rumored to be 1136 x 640.

The phone will be packed with 1GB of RAM (or more) and the device will be 4G LTE compatible. As of right now, the iPhone 4S is the only major smartphone without a 4G LTE cellular data option. The latest iPad has 4G LTE.

According to rumors and anonymous reports, the new iPhone will ship nine days after it is announced, on Sept. 21. This date has been in speculation for a while.

One of the other big rumors of the season has been the launch of a smaller iPad. There's no confirmation, of course, just reports from anonymous sources and leaked parts which are allegedly intended for this tablet. But where there's this much smoke, there's likely a fire.

Based on the most reliable reports, this tablet should be close to eight inches diagonally (rather than the current model's 9.7 inches), offer a plain (non-Retina) display, and be priced in the $250 range (to compete with Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD tablets).

Leaked parts suggest that the device would also use the new smaller 19-pin connector, and that it would come in your choice of black or white. Both 9to5 Mac's Seth Weintraub and Apple watcher John Gruber agree that chances are high that this smaller tablet will look a lot like a large iPod Touch, with a smaller bezel, but Gruber also says it will probably run the full-fledged iPad version of iOS.

Hopefully, Apple retailers are planning for the big event of when the phone actually is for sale by hiring more employees to handle the traffic, and quickly training them to handle the mass flow of tech questions.

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