UPDATE:

Daringfireball.net disapproves what 9To5Mac says. According to the website, neither iPhone 5  will be longer and wider than iPhone 4S, nor Apple is gearing up for production of the handset.

Well, it’s a rumor, but still my heart skipped a beat! According to the sources of 9To5Mac (at Foxconn in China), Apple is ramping up for the production of iPhone 5 and is planning a mid-year launch of the handset.

Sources said that Apple has built a large number of device prototypes, all different from each other, and all of them are being moved around in the system currently. Henceforth, they can not say with confidence which one of them is “our” next generation iPhone. However, they figured out some of the commonalities in various samples that have been floating around lately. These are listed below:

1. At least one of the displays was manufactured by LG  (as we reported earlier). All of them had size of 4+ inches .
2. All of them possessed a different form factor than iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.
3. None of the devices are teardrop shaped.
4. They are symmetrical in thickness and are a little longer and wider than the current generation iPhone
5. Possibly, none of them are “the” device!

iPhone 5 Leaked Production Picture : Source 9to5mac

This latest tittle-tattle is similar to the one we reported  around a month back. Now, if observed carefully, we see that in case of iPhone 4S launched last year, Apple started its production in late spring and after around six months, it held the final launch. Taking the situation in a similar way, if production of the next generation iPhone starts now, we will be able to get our hands on it in summer! Wowie!

The article on 9To5Mac says that last summer, the same source reported that iPhone 5 was not happening and that Apple was working on iPhone 4S instead. As this information was against the tide of rumors prevailing at that time and ultimately was found to be true, this somehow improves credibility of the source I guess! Let’s see what happens next!