Rumour: Foxconn insider reveals that iPhone 5 is entering production - 4-inch+ screen, not teardrop shaped

An unnamed Foxconn employee has told 9-to-5 Mac that the first iPhone 5 handsets are about to enter production at the Chinese plant.

Despite the apparent closeness to the device of the source, however, details about what the phone has and looks like are thin on the ground.

This is apparently due to there being multiple samples of the phone, presumably to avoid a Foxconn employee from leaking out details to a website, I guess.

What the source did say was that all the samples they’ve seen are not teardrop-shaped, which puts the boot into one of the least likely iPhone 5 rumours floating around, and that the screens were larger 4 inch+ models manufactured by LG.

They also confirmed that none of the samples ‘has the iPhone 4/4S form factor’, although no further details were forthcoming about what shape they did take.

If the phone is about to enter production, then it’s also likely that we’ll see it announced at the ‘traditional’ iPhone launch period (the summer), rather than in the Autumn as with the iPhone 4S.

While normally I’d end one of my rumour posts by turning to the camera and saying something amusing about salt, this current bit of rumour-mongering does come from the source that revealed Apple was preparing an iPhone 4S when everyone else was calling it the iPhone 5, so they have a decent track record.

Well, better than a certain Taiwanese newspaper, at least.