Continuing the legacy of rumors related to Apple products, speculations surrounding the next iPhone iteration, amusingly dubbed the “iPhone 5S,” started gaining traction hardly a couple of months after the release of the iPhone 5, the latest model of the company’s flagship smartphone.

As current rumors go, predictions of a possible release date for the iPhone 5S range from the first quarter of 2013 to the next year’s edition of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. Given that things are very murky now and it is too early to settle on a specific date, readers should take every rumor with a pinch of salt.

Although Apple did play with its release schedules this year, something that it never tried before, the rumor that it might release the iPhone 5S in the first quarter of 2013, making the existing iPhone 5 out of date in just 5 or 6 months after its release, does not seem to be a winning decision for the company.

“The iPhone 5 is just too successful to make it obsolete in just a half a year,” wrote Michael Nace of the iPhone 5 News Blog. “Sure, Apple did just do that with the iPad 4, replacing the ‘New iPad’ in well less than a year. But the iPhone is Apple’s flagship device, and given the amount of new design and engineering put into the iPhone 5, Apple will certainly want to ride it for longer than just 5 or 6 months.”

However, according to Nace, while Q1 2013 release of the iPhone 5S might not be materialized, the 2013 WWDC launch for the device does have a possibility. He pointed to a recent report by Product Reviews that was apparently betting on the annual developer conference in June.

“A new iPhone will definitely be coming in 2013, but will Apple release the iPhone 5S, or will they skip the upgraded version of the iPhone 5 to press on with the iPhone 6? History tells us that the iPhone 5S will be next and it could happen at WWDC 2013 instead next year, rather than in Fall 2013 as we’ve seen with the last two iPhone launches,” said the report.

The report also attempted to guess the features of the next iPhone if Apple indeed goes for the June release of the device.

“The iPhone 5 now has 4G LTE support at last, but it still ships with a dual-core processor – so a quad-core chip has to come at the very least we feel… We would also like to see improvements to the iPhone 5 camera as well, in a iPhone 5S or iPhone 6 refresh,” the report added.

Coming back to Nace’s assessment, if the iPhone 5S in June is easier to believe, “the reason why the iPhone 5 didn’t debut at the WWDC 2012 could be the same reason why the iPhone 5S isn’t announced at WWDC 2013: iOS.”

He said that the launch of the iPhone 5S at WWDC 2013 depends on the next major release of iOS, which is rumored to be iOS 7. If we don’t see a bet version of iOS 7 at some point in the coming spring, the new iPhone also won’t make it to the June event.

“Simply put, there is now another established pattern at Apple: the new iOS iteration and iPhone are inextricably linked. With the new iOS, we get a glimpse into what’s coming up with the new iPhone as well, while the iPad release tends to get launched on the tail-end of the iOS lifecycle,” Nace wrote.

Will Apple get back with a WWDC-new iPhone combo in 2013? Your thoughts are welcome in the comment section below.

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