How's Sept. 7 (Maybe) for iPhone 5 Release?

With September just a turn of the calendar away, the Apple iPhone 5 rumors are getting juicier by the day.

According to Japanese tech news site Kodawarisan, (here's the English version), Apple will unveil an iCloud iPhone at an Sept. 7 event. Along with a new iPhone, Apple might also release a slate of new iPods around that date, the tech site said.

In the past, Apple has unveiled new iPod products in early September at its media event, which would fall roughly around Sept. 7 this year; however, many Apple watchers are expecting it instead to release the next iPhone this year at the media event. Apple usually unveils new iPhones at its June Worldwide Developer's Conference event, but the company didn't do so this year -- helping to further fuel speculation.

More than a year has passed since Apple introduced the iPhone 4. Since then, the company has picked up another major U.S. telecom carrier and released another version of the iPad.

The Japanese tech news site cited a "source in the know" for the Sept. 7 date. The site has accurately predicted Apple rumors in the past -- most recently in 2009, when it uncovered when the Mac mini would come out.

No one really seems to know exactly when the next iPhone 5 will hit stores shelves and analysts and bloggers are predicting the phone will be out anywhere possibly from late Sept. 2011 to March 2012. (UK blog KitGuru weighed in with the latter timeframe.)

Apple blog MacRumors posted a series of mockups that suggest what the new iPhone 5 might look like when it finally does come out -- based on leaked design specs from an unnamed Chinese manufacturer. Other updates have suggested the new iPhone 5 will be thinner than its predecessors, with a larger screen and multiple components.

Meanwhile, according to a post on Boy Genius Report, the iPhone 5 could come out around the same time as Google's Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. That's because Google doesn't want people drooling over the new iPhone 5 while coming out of their contracts with the company, the report said.