Eager to open your wallet for the iPhone 5? You may get your opportunity to do just that later this week. According to MacRumors, Apple may begin accepting pre-orders for its new iPhone on Friday, September 14. The site has been told that certain parts of Apple's sales support team are "significantly" growing their staffing levels starting Friday morning at 6:00 a.m. ET. A large staffing surge is expected for that shift, and high staff levels are said to continue throughout the day.
A previous rumor claimed that Apple would open up pre-orders for the iPhone 5 the same day as the device's announcement. However, it's possible that things may have been shifted around prior to Apple's September 12 event, leading the company to instead opt to repeat what it did with the iPhone 4S last year and kick pre-orders off on the Friday following the announcement. I'm sure that there are some folks that'd prefer that pre-orders begin on Friday, as it'd give them more time to save up more cash and make a decision about which model to buy. The good news is that all the iPhone 5 rumors and speculation will finally be coming to an end in less than 24 hours (with iPhone 6 rumors likely to start popping up shortly thereafter), as Apple's event will be going down tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. PT, 1:00 p.m. ET.
In other iPhone 5 rumor news, European carrier Vodafone briefly had a post on its official blog today that showed off its new nano-SIM cards, which the new iOS handset is expected to support. Vodafone quickly pulled the post, but Google Cache managed to get to it and save a copy before it was gone. There's no direct mention of the iPhone 5 in the post, but the carrier does say "the first devices have now been announced," even though there are currently no phones available now that accept nano-SIMs. Considering that the iPhone 5 will likely be announced tomorrow, it's possible that this post went up just a day early. The nano-SIM, which was standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute in July, measures 40 percent smaller than the micro-SIM used in phones like the iPhone 4S and Nokia Lumia 900. You can find a shot comparing a nano-SIM (right) to a micro-SIM (left) below.
