iPhone 5
Just a day after a Chinese website shocked the tech world by posting purported new photos of the fully assembled Apple's next generation iPhone complete with redesigned dock connector and rear panel, a new report surfaced early Monday saying that Apple is planning to debut the new iPhone at a special event on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, with the release date to follow 9 days later on Friday, Sept. 21. Martin Hajek

The widely believed Sept.12 announcement and Sept. 21 release date for the sixth generation Apple iPhone, presumably called the "iPhone 5," are just a few days away. The company is hopefully about to send the official media event invites soon. For Apple, it's time to bring something new when it comes to the form factor of its flagship smartphone as both the existing iPhone 4S and the iPhone 4 were almost identical.

With the next gen Apple iPhone widely believed to be just days away, a new video reportedly appeared at the IFA 2012 trade show in Berlin, which showed a handset, claiming to be a mockup of the fully assembled Apple iPhone 5. Photo credit: Martin Hajek

With almost all new Android smartphones coming with bigger displays, Apple is highly expected to follow suit by releasing the upcoming version of the iPhone with a larger 4-inch display. Thanks to a number of leaked components, Apple enthusiasts all around the world now have a clear idea about how the handset looks like, featuring not only a bigger screen but probably also a smaller dock connector.

If the expected mid-September release is indeed a fact, it's possible that all those leaked next gen iPhone parts have now been assembled to form the iPhone 5. Now that the device itself is just days away, how about a video starring a fully-assembled next gen iPhone in all its glory?

You name it, you have it. A new video reportedly appeared at the IFA 2012 trade show in Berlin, which showed a handset, claiming to be a mockup of the fully assembled Apple iPhone 5.

The video, first spotted by the technology news website GSM Israel, showed a device that was closely in line with many rumored features of the iPhone 5. The mockup showed a taller form factor with a larger screen that should be 4-inch, a headphone jack next to the smaller dock connector on the bottom edge of the device and a two-toned backplate.

The report said it obtained the iPhone 5 mockup from the CEO of a major cover and case manufacturer. However, it didn't reveal the name of the case maker. Check out the video below:

According to The Verge, "volume production of the form-fitting cases has already begun, with a view to shipping to retailers in a week's time."

Here's another video, courtesy of The Verge:

Taiwanese Pop Star On China's Twitter With The "iPhone 5"?

Meanwhile, Taiwanese pop star Jimmy Lin stirred up a frenzy Saturday, after he posted photos of what appeared to be the next Apple iPhone on his Sina Weibo microblog, the Chinese micro-blogging equivalent of Twitter, and attracted more than 100,000 comments.

According to The Next Web, Lin, with 13.5 million followers, "struck a chord" with his iPhone rumor and attracted over 80,000 reposts in just five hours after he posted the photos.

"Today I confirmed that the iPhone 5 will be longer and have an aluminum back like the iPad," Lin wrote, as noticed by Sina Tech Hong Kong. "While it has a 4-inch screen, it's thinner, though it feels about the same in the hand. The headphone jack has also been moved to the bottom. As for the dock connector, the iPhone 5 doesn't use the 30-pin connector, instead changing to a smaller 19-pin connector."

The Next Web reported that there were "irregularities in the font on the back of the phone" and its bottom part was looking cheap. According to it, "the device is almost certainly a fake, though it does bear a resemblance to low-quality factory mockups that appear to be cropping up elsewhere" (may be the one spotted at IFA 2012).

From what is being rumored, the iPhone 5 is expected to come with a larger 4-inch screen with in-cell touch technology, a uni-body design and a smaller 9-pin dock connector. The device is likely to run on iOS 6, which would be completely scalable to a larger 640 x 1136 display.

The device is expected to be powered by a much-improved processor. Other talked-about features include 4G LTE technology, Near Field Communication (NFC), 1GB RAM, improved Siri, liquidmetal casing, an 8 megapixel (or even higher) rear camera, a 2 megapixel front-facing camera for video chatting and a much-improved battery life.