Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States and current Apple board member, has seemingly confirmed that multiple iPhone devices will be released in October, mentioning to a Johannesburg audience "the new iPhones coming out next month".

Speaking at the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit in South Africa, Gore, who is also a senior advisor to Google, said: "Not to mention the new iPhones coming out next month. That was a plug."

Now obviously a lot of fanboy hysteria has been stirred up by the fact that the ex-VP used the plural "iPhones". This has been taken as the most concrete evidence yet that the next-gen iPhone will indeed be accompanied by a cheaper iPhone model.

It's often been suggested that, as well as a spanking new iPhone 5, we'll also be getting a more wallet-friendly update to the iPhone 4.

It's reported that 10 million of the budget models will be ready at launch for a phone described as an "iPhone 4 look-alike". Our guess is that it'll just be an 8GB version of the existing model, with the odd internal tweak.

On Wednesday, All Things Digital stated that the new Apple CEO, Tim Cook, will be the one giving the 5th-gen iPhone presentation to the watching world on 4 October, with the handset pretty much "green for launch".

However, Gore's statement is the first time that anyone from the Apple board has specifically stated that there will be a new handset launch in October.

And hey, politicians never lie, right?

An inconvenient truth, or an inconvenient slip of the tongue? Let us know what you think about all things iPhone 5 using the comments below.