Best Buy is expecting pre-sales of the iPhone 5 to begin in the first week of October, a leaked internal document from the retail giant reveals. In addition, the document says Apple’s eagerly-awaited handset is coming to the Sprint network.

There has been a plethora of reports about leaked next generation iPhone parts that are allegedly for either an iPhone 4S or 5 model. Now we are seeing an equal number of rumors about iPhone 4S/5 case designs. Most of these new case designs probably started after an alleged next generation iPhone design document leaked earlier this summer. Indications are that case vendors are taking this leak seriously and producing cases based on the information they have received.

MacRumors previously commissioned a set of renderings trying to decide what the next iPhone will look like. Later they analyzed the existing third-party cases to help decide what that device might look like. The results they were left with are a bit puzzling.

I went to the local Apple Store today in Friendswood, Texas at the Baybrook Mall to grab something and I came home with another unofficial Apple accessory from a Mall kiosk.

Global Cell, Inc., a cell phone accessory store sitting just outside the Apple Store, sold me an iPhone 5 rubber case for $19.95 plus tax.

We told you yesterday that Apple had allegedly lost a next gen iPhone prototype in a San Franciscan tequila bar. Through a string of events, it was uncovered that Apple had purportedly tracked the prototype device to an apartment in Bernal Heights and sent a private security team on a recovery mission.

The San Francisco Police originally said that it had no knowledge of such an investigation, and it was believed that Apple’s security team could have posed as police for the purpose of searching the apartment of Sergio Calderón. Now, the SFPD is saying that officers did in fact help Apple in the attempt to recover the mysterious iPhone prototype.

This one’s nuts. Remember how there were no police reports about the missing iPhone 5 prototype, even though CNet reported that police offices had actually searched a man’s house looking for it? The guy whose home was searched in search of that lost iPhone 5 prototype says the officials weren’t actually police officers… they were Apple employees impersonating them.

The implication is that the officials, who appear to be members of Apple’s security team, were impersonating police, a crime punishable by up to a year in jail in California.

Earlier this week, CNet surprised everyone by reporting that Apple had lost yet another iPhone prototype at a San Francisco bar. We were so intrigued that we stopped by to talk to the manager but he didn’t know jack about it.

You know who else has never heard anything about a lost iPhone 5 prototype? The San Francisco Police. Which is weird, because according to CNet’s story, they were called out to investigate.

We’ve all heard that the iPhone 5 will have a thinner design than the current model, but how much thinner are we talking about? If any of these Chinese iPhone 5 cases leaking out of Hong Kong are anything to go by, about half as thick, but quite a bit larger.

Check out this full gallery on Macitynet.it, as they plug an iPhone 4 and fourth gen iPod Touch into an iPhone 5 case to contrast sizes. It’s illuminating.

[via 9to5Mac]

Remember that radically different iPhone 5 design that popped up by way of a miniscule, pixelated icon in the latest Photostream beta? The boys over at 9to5Mac have blown it up into a larger mockup, and they reckon it might be the smaller, cheaper iPhone we’ve been hearing scuttlebutt about.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPDSThRG_n8&feature=youtu.be

Well, that was quick: just an hour or two after it broke that Apple lost an iPhone 5 prototype at a San Francisco tequila lounge, someone’s already given it the good old Downfall treatment.

This one starts slow, but it really gets good in the tantrum part of things. “What will they lose next, Tim Cook’s sex tape?”

Oh man, not again. In July, Apple lost yet another iPhone prototype in a San Francisco bar… this time, a testing prototype of the iPhone 5.