According to Mr. Fran Shammo, CFO Verizon, the carrier expects a major phone in the Q4 this year. During Verizon’s quarterly conference he made a statement that iPhone 5 may drop in the 4th quarter this year. 

However, the actual release date is not clear. But many expect that Apple will launch the device on the same schedule as that of iPhone 4S. Till now this announcement from Verizon CFO seems to be the only authentic news about the iPhone 5 release date.

So, what to expect from iPhone 5? iPhone 4S falls short to many android devices in the market in several fields. iPhone 5 is likely to fix those problems and present a more powerful device. First of all the competitors like HTC and Samsung are producing large screen Android smartphones. Take the example of Samsung Galaxy SIII. It features a 4.8 inch display. On the other hand iPhone 4S offers a 3.5 inch display. Although the Retina Display with high pixel density offers a sharp and elegant display, the screen size is pretty small in comparison to the devices like HTC One X or the new Galaxy S3. So, iPhone 5 may feature a bigger screen. There has also been a rumor that the iPhone 5 screen will be thinner.

iPhone 4S features dual core processor with A5 chipset whereas Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One X both feature quad core processors.  So, the lack of quad core processor is certainly a big issue. Apple may decide to upgrade the processor in the new iPhone.

iPhone 4S also lacks many advanced  features like NFC, USB, 4G LTE capability etc. iPhone 5 may add these features. But there is no official confirmation about it yet.

Despite of some of the above deficiencies iPhone is still the highest selling phone of Verizon. It has sold about  2.7 million units of iPhone in the last quarter. Let’s wait and see what iPhone 5 brings for us.