Lock screen notifications in Apple's upcoming iOS 5

Apple will unveil at least one new iPhone at a media event that begins at 10 a.m. today at its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. That much pretty much everyone agrees on. But from there the situation gets very murky, with different sites and their respective anonymous sources now directly contradicting one another.

The thing is, whatever the next iPhone hardware is like, we actually do know quite a bit about what the software will be like. Apple previewed iOS 5 earlier this year, promising a fall release — with features including a new notifications center, deep Twitter integration, quicker access to the camera app, and a text messaging app, iMessage, that also works on iPads and iPod touches over WiFi networks.

One persistent rumor is that we’ll see an overhauled iPhone 4, dubbed the iPhone 4S — basically taking the existing iPhone shell and upgrading the the processor, camera and other specs under the hood to improve the device. The iPhone 5 is reported to have a slimmer, tapered design and other hardware improvements.

That’s where things start to get less clear.

Boy Genius Report said yesterday that it has been told that AT&T and Verizon will get the intermediary iPhone 4S at first, running on 3G networks, and the iPhone 5 will initially be exclusive to Sprint, running on a speedy 4G WiMAX network.

If true, it’s very interesting news for Kirkland-based Clearwire, which supplies the WiMAX network to Sprint. BGR says Verizon and AT&T would launch the iPhone early next year on LTE (Long-Term Evolution) networks, which rivals WiMAX as a fourth-generation wireless technology.

But the notion that Sprint would get an iPhone 5 exclusive is generating plenty of skepticism.

And the Wall Street Journal this morning is implicitly throwing cold water on the BGR story — quoting “people familiar with the company’s plans” saying that the new iPhone will run on today’s existing 3G networks, not LTE or WiMAX.

One persistent rumor is that the new iPhones will come with an advanced voice-activated assistant, based on technology acquired by Apple and further developed by the company. MacRumors, which rounds up the iPhone rumors here, does a nice job envisioning what that would be like in this video.

It doesn’t look like there will be an official live stream out of Cupertino, but we’ll have details on GeekWire later this morning, and here’s a collection of live blogs that will be covering the event … Gizmodo, Engadget, This is My Next, AllThingsD and Macworld.

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