As the summer moves forward, customers are hearing rumors after rumors about the new Apple iPhone 5 possibly coming out as early as August or September.

New reports suggest this is unlikely, and that it will likely release around October.

Verizon CFO Fran Shammo made a vague reference to the iPhone 5's upcoming launch on Thursday during the company's earnings release conference call.

He said, "the company could be expecting a big phone to launch during the fourth quarter of this year," but did not specify an exact date when the smartphone would be released, according to wsfa.com.

The fourth quarter, between October 1 and December 1, might be the time for the highly anticipated mobile device. Wsfa.com said that it's likely that Apply will release the new smartphone before the holiday shopping season gets into full swing.

Last year, Apple announced the iPhone 4S on Oct. 4, 2011 and it went on sale on Oct. 14, 2011 in the U.S. and other countries. Apple might be taking a similar pattern this year.

Shammo reported that the iPhone was still selling tremendously well on Verizon and that the company was able to sell 2.7 million iPhones during the second quarter, according to iDigital Times.

According to the Examiner, Gotta Be Mobile reported that though the reference made by Verizon's CFO was "vague, it was clear that he was hinting at the new iPhone 5. He made the statement when discussing why customers did not upgrade in Q2 of this year saying that the cause likely was the constant rumor mill of a new phone coming out in the fourth quarter."

BGR recently confirmed from a trusted source that Apple goes through multiple stages before a product is manufactures, and two of these include the "engineering verification test" stage and the "design verification test" phase. Apple's sixth-generation iPhone is currently in the EVT3 stage, the third revision of the engineering test stage, and has not yet entered the DVT stage. This is proof that Apple has not started production yet.

Apple is testing units that have 1GB of RAM, doubled from the iPhone 4S's 512MB, according to BGR. Also, the phone will have integrated 4G LTE radios, and NFC hardware will be in it. "We're expecting Apple's new iPhone to be released at the end of September or early October," the reports says.

BGR also confirmed that the iPhone 5 will feature these tiny SIM cards called nano-SIMs.

The Financial Times reported earlier last week that  carriers in Europe were starting to "stockpile" nano-SIM cards in preparation for the iPhone 5. This smaller SIM is 40 percent smaller than micro-SIM, which is deployed in many of current generation smartphones, according to Mobile&Apps.

Multiple carrier sources have exlusively told BGR that Apple is supplying nano-SIM adapters so its carrier partners can test how nano-SIMs work on their networks in standard test devices before they are widely deployed when the new phone is introduced.

In accordance with this, reports say that the new iPhone 5 will have a bigger display, be thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4S, and will be able to run on 4G LTE technology. It was also said that it will feature a 19-pin mini connector and it will be equipped with a new technology called in-cell. This new in-cell technology integrates touch sensors into the LCD, making it unnecessary to have a separate touch-screen layer. This creates a thinner screen and improves the quality of displayed images.

Not only is this phone hotly anticipated, but it looks like it will be the biggest electronice device of 2012.