Rumors

The Verizon iPhone helped the iPhone 4 lead smartphone sales in 2011. So it makes sense that Apple would want to add the third-largest cellphone company to its roster. Adding carriers will help Apple introduce new customers to the iPhone, which will of course help them increase sales. According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple is not going to wait very long, and plans to introduce a Sprint iPhone at the same time AT&T and Verizon will be getting the iPhone 5 in October.

Engadget cites another unnamed source who said Sprint will begin carrying the iPhone 4 at the same time as the iPhone 5. Introducing any type of Sprint iPhone will give Apple 52 million more potential customers. We have heard rumors about a Sprint iPhone before, but the days of Apple exclusivity are coming to an end with the flooding of the smartphone market.

Why rush the next-generation iPhone when older iPhone models are still selling well? On Monday, the research firm NPD revealed that the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 helped Apple increase its smartphone market share in Q2 of 2011. While Google's Android grabbed 52 percent of sales in the U.S., Apple still had two of the best selling phones so far this year. Proving there is no need to flood the market with new devices on a daily basis. However, the same report revealed that one in five new phones sold in Q2 were on a prepaid plan, and that the prepaid phone market is still emerging.

On Tuesday, Reuters dug the iPhone 4S out of its rumor grave, by claiming Apple is working on a new flash drive for a lower-priced 8GB iPhone 4 which will be released in a few weeks. While Apple fanboys and tech bloggers have their eyes glued to the iPhone 5, and the new rumored October 7 release date, does Apple plan on sneaking out their "affordable" iPhone in September?

It looks like BGR is taking back their August iPhone 5 release date. This time one of their "high-level AT&T sources" revealed that an AT&T Vice President told his employees to prepare themselves for a launch in early October.

The unnamed AT&T President said, “expect things to get really, really busy in the next 35-50 days."

October seems to be the new popular release date with iPhone fortunetellers, Gizmodo published an e-mail from someone claiming to be an AT&T employee, who wrote vacations were blacked out at the end of September. The Wall Street Journal reported that the iPhone 5 will be available sometime in late October. And 9to5Mac sources claim Apple will start accepting pre-orders in September and launch the iPhone 5 on October 7.

BGR, the tech blog who announced that the iPhone 5 would be here in a few weeks, dusted off an old iPhone rumor by claiming they got their hands on an internal iOS test build that features property list files for LTE.

BGR says Apple's carrier partners are testing LTE capable iPhone models, much like Sprint employees are testing the iPhone 5. And the LTE rumors didn't stop there. Today, Engadget fueled the fire by publishing an image of 4G LTE equipment inside an Apple store.

The Engadget tipster revealed that AT&T installed a piece of equipment that supports 700MHz and AWS bands in an unnamed Apple store. In March, AT&T revealed its plans to use T-Mobile's 700MHz LTE spectrum if their merger ever went through.

Sometimes the Apple rumor mill spins out of control. Way out of control. The hype surrounding the iPhone 5 is no different, but lately we've seen some stories surface that are complete speculation or absolutely bogus. Separating the wheat from the chaff can be tough, but other times it's so easy we have to laugh.

First of all, for those expecting a September 7th Apple event you can cancel the party planning. Japanese site Kodawarisan first brought up the date after being told by "a source in the know" but we're not buying this. The Loop has confirmed with their Apple sources that the company has no such plans. Given The Loop's track record it would appear that the first Wednesday in September will be boring after all.