Whoops! New images are adding some strong evidence to the rumormongering that Apple's going to announce the release of the iPhone 5 on Sprint's network come Tuesday. And you can thank Radio Shack for this one.
According to an alleged screenshot taken of a Radio Shack internal inventory page, both a 16-gigabyte iPhone 5 and a 32-gigabyte iPhone 5 are a-coming. It's a bit more a significant bit of evidence than the guessing game that arose from an earlier internal Sprint memo, which told company employees that vacations were blacked out between September 30 and October 15 due to the "possibility of a major phone launch."
Sprint is still allegedly going to be offering the iPhone 5 with an unlimited data plan. There's no indication of how long that the plan might stick around post-launch, as has been the case with other "unlimited" data plans on competing carriers, but the move – if true – is aimed at giving Sprint some kind of competitive advantage against AT&T and Verizon. Sprint, in this case, would sit in the market as the only iPhone carrier with a truly unlimited data plan.
So what does that make of the iPhone 4S?
For those unfamiliar, there's also been talk that Apple's only intending on launching a souped-up version of the iPhone 4 on Tuesday, cleverly dubbed the, "iPhone 4S." New evidence supporting that theory includes new language inside a beta iTunes release (since pulled by Apple) that references an "iPhone 4S" and includes an image of a CDMA iPhone 4.
So what's it going to be? Are the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 the same device and we're all just quibbling over the name? Is Apple actually releasing two separate devices – an upgrade to the iPhone 4 and a slightly bigger, fancier iPhone 5, as a recent leak by Cincinnati Bell might suggest? Are the rumors going to persist until 9:59 a.m. (PST) on Tuesday?
Odds indicate: Yes.
To hear more about the rumored features – both hardware and software – arriving with the new iPhone (or iPhones), be sure to check out our additional coverage of all things iPhone.
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