A trusted Verizon employee has just confirmed to TechCrunch that the carrier is having an all-staff vacation blackout from the dates of Friday, September 21 to September 30. You know what that means, right?
The next iPhone, whether it’s called the iPhone 5 or simply the new iPhone, will almost certainly be available in stores (with lines wrapping around the back of them) starting Friday, September 21.
It’s largely expected that the next-gen iPhone will be announced on September 12, in usual Apple fashion. (Though the spectacle may be a bit different this time around considering that Apple’s lead presentation executive was fired in December.)
If we travel back a bit and examine the historical timeline from Apple’s announcement, to pre-order, to launch, the dates all seem to match up.
Last year Apple announced the iPhone 4S on a Tuesday, October 4th. The phone went up for pre-order on that Friday, October 7, and was available in stores on Friday, October 14, a week later.
The iPhone 5/2012 timeline looks almost identical:
- Expected announcement: Wednesday, September 12
- Expected pre-order date: Wednesday, September 12
- Launch date, as confirmed by our trusted source: Friday, September 21
And so began ticking the internal iCountdown clocks of a million fanboys.