According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who works for Taiwanese company Concord Securities, the iPhone 5 will only feature "slight modfications" to the design of the iPhone 4, and that it will finally go into mass production in September this year.

He also claims that new Apple handset will contain the same A5 processor as the iPad 2, and that Qualcomm is to get in on the action by supplying the baseband processor for GSM and CDMA models.

Before you dismiss this along with other scurrilous iPhone 5 tittle tattle though, consider the fact that Kuo was also the analyst who said that the iPad 2 would feature the same screen resolution as the original iPad (1024 x 768) and that it would feature the same cameras as the iPod touch, in preference to the better sensors found in the iPhone 4.

His report also states that trial production of the new device will start in August (much later than the traditional June release date of iPhones gone by), so expect to see one lying around on a bar stool from round about then.

Once strange anomaly, though, is that he still expects Apple to announced the new device at WWDC 2011, which kicks off on 6 June. However, it's highly unlikely, given previous behaviour, that Apple would announce a device months before it even goes into production.

Just take the white iPhone 4, for example... Er...

Right or wrong? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below...