In the span of a few hours, Apple will take the wraps off of its much-awaited sixth generation iPhone, widely believed to be called "iPhone 5," at a special media event scheduled to take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco at 10 a.m. PT Wednesday.

Although the company officially confirmed the event last week, Apple enthusiasts all around the world have been aware of such an event since July. Rene Ritchie of iMore came up with a report July 30 in which he cited some insider sources revealing that the Cupertino tech giant would hold a special event Sept. 12 to unveil iPhone 5.

In a subsequent report in August, Ritchie made yet another revelation. He said that Apple planned to start taking pre-orders of iPhone 5, "at least in the US," from Sept. 12 itself, with the actual release tipped for the following Friday, Sept. 21.

While no question has been raised in terms of the Sept. 21 release date of the next generation iPhone, some new information, obtained by MacRumors, apparently challenge iMore's report saying that Apple would start taking pre-orders of the new iPhone from Sept. 12 itself.

On Tuesday, MacRumors reported that Apple is currently strengthening its staff most probably in preparation for Sept. 14 (Friday) pre-orders of the iPhone 5. Here's what the report said:

"MacRumors is now hearing that pre-orders may not begin tomorrow following the media event and that they may instead start on Friday morning in a scenario similar to last year's debut. We're hearing that certain portions of Apple's online sales support team are significantly increasing their staffing levels beginning at 6:00 AM Eastern on Friday, with a major surge for the initial shift beginning at that time and a sustained level of high staffing for at least the remainder of the day."

The report also pointed out last year's iPhone 4S pre-orders schedule, also set for the Friday following the media event that started nearly 45 minutes after the appointed time. That said, according to the report, it's still unclear whether the iPhone 5 pre-orders would start from 6 in the morning right away or some time later.

Rumors are rife that the iPhone 5 will feature a smaller doc connector, replacing the current 30-pin port. According to the latest reports, the new connector would be a 9-pin dock connector as a possible reference to this has been discovered in the iOS 6 beta 4.

Rumors also suggest that the handset would run on iOS 6, which would be completely scalable to a larger 640 x 1136 display. The device is also likely to feature a much-improved processor, a larger 4-inch Retina display, 4G LTE technology, Near Field Communication (NFC), 1GB RAM, iOS 6, 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.

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