Kumar has, um, a spotty track record when it comes to rumors. Sometimes they pan out; quite often they don’t. But there’s nothing inherently implausible about this one, and it’s presumably true that we haven’t yet seen the last Apple stuff that Steve Jobs worked on.

This time? Things are surprisingly blurry. If there’s no Sprint iPhone of some sort, and no iPhone with ambitious voice commands based on the Siri technology Apple acquired, I’ll be startled. But we don’t really know whether there will be one iPhone or two. We don’t know if there will be a radically new iPhone 5 or one that’s a near-twin of the iPhone 4. We’re not sure if the screen size will change. Basically, most of scuttlebutt of the past few months is still in play.

So here’s a roundup of some of the major rumors. In each case, I’m linking to an article that spreads a rumor–and one which quashed it. If you need to refresh your memory, read any or all of ‘em. And then–assuming you’re reading this before 10am PT on Tuesday–vote in our silly little poll. (I’ll report on the results once the news is out.

Rumor: There’s a new iPhone with a teardrop-shaped case.

Pro: Is This What the iPhone 5 Will Look Like, Josh Topolsky, This is My Next

Con: Teardrop Skepticism, John Gruber, Daring Fireball

Rumor: There’s a new iPhone with a larger screen.

Pro: Leaked iPhone 5 Screen protector Suggests a Larger Display and a Wider Home Button, Daisybahu, Redmond Pie

Con: iPhone 5 to Stick With Smaller Screen Size?, Lance Whitney, Cnet

Rumor: There’s a new iPhone with a fancy voice input feature.

Pro: The New iPhone…, Mark Gurman, 9to5Mac

Con: I can’t find any stories denying this possibility!

Rumor: There are two new iPhones.

Pro: “Apple is Releasing Two New iPhones Next Month, and Here’s Why, Jonathan Geller, BGR

Con: Only One New iPhone This Year and It Will Look a Lot Like the iPhone 4, Says Analyst, John Paczkowski, All Things D

Pro: Inside Sprint’s Bet on iPhone, Joanne Lublin and Spencer Ante, Wall Street Journal

Con: No Sprint iPhone 4 (or 5) this year means more Android smartphones, Joan Lee, The Pop Herald

Rumor: Sprint is the only carrier getting the iPhone 5.

Pro: Sprint scores iPhone 5 exclusive thanks to $20 billion deal with Apple?, Jonathan Geller, BGR

Con: BGR is Crazypants, says iPhone 5 is exclusive to Sprint, John Brownlee, Cult of Mac

Rumor: T-Mobile will have an iPhone.

Pro: T-Mobile to get iPhone 5 as well, report says, Josh Lowensohn, Cnet

Con: Well, T-Mobile denied it.

Rumor: New iPhone will come in capacities up to 64GB

Pro: Next iPhone to likely come in 64Gb, 32GB and 16GB capacities, Mark Gurman, 9to5Mac

Con: Vodafone UK Almost Confirms iPhone 5 to
come With 16/32GB Storage, Oliver Haslam, iDownloadBlog

Rumor: New iPhone will have an improved camera.

Pro: iPhone 5 rumoured to have improved camera flash, Andy Merrett, Cnet UK

Con: “Leaked” photo suggests the iPhone 5 camera won’t be much of an upgrade, Chris Foresman, Ars Technica

Rumor: New iPhone is a world phone.

Pro: iPhone 5: Thin ‘World Phone’ With No LTE 4G, Analyst Says, Brian Caufield, Forbes

Con: I can’t find any refutations of this rumor.

Rumor: A new iPhone will look much like the iPhone 4

Pro: iPhone 5 will look a whole lot like the iPhone 4: report, Matthew Shaer, Christian Science Monitor

Con: iPhone 5 to have radical new design according to Case-Mate images, Todd Haselton, BGR

Okay, ready to vote?

Thanks for chiming in–and if you happen to be reading this during the keynote at 10am PT on Tuesday, check out Macworld’s liveblog, the one I’ll be reading. (We’re also embedding it at technologizer.com/iphone5.)

(My classic-style iPod and I were inseparable for eons, and I once looked down at the iPhone because of its comparatively small capacity–but it’s been a long time since I’ve so much as booted up an iPod. Do you use one?)

The company says its “inside resources” claim Apple would indeed be launching two phones in early October, the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5. I don’t know why Case-Mate is jumping into the rumors game, as that’s our job, but I do digress…

BGR reports though that the page we’ve linked to here is different from a page they saw, which included a gallery of case images that has since disappeared. Either way, the now ever-more rumored tapered design akin to the iPad 2 seems to what Case-Mate is basing their case designs on, and it does appear noticeably wider.

Now this just could be Case-Mate reacting to the increasingly more frequent rumors of a wider and thinner iPhone 5, or they actually could have inside information. Personally, I’m hoping that either way, they’re right.

I’m no fan of the iPhone 4 design, and I remember in the days after that infamous Gizmodo leak saying “I hope this isn’t it.” But alas it was, despite my (and some others’) belief that this was way too utilitarian in design to come out of Apple. Thus, I’m happy to see Apple return to a sleeker design with the iPhone 5.

Either way Apple, could you hurry up? This iPhone 3GS is getting long in the tooth, and I’m getting impatient. If I have to wait any longer I may have to go to the dark side (Android, that is)! Perish the thought.

As I’ve mentioned here, perhaps too often, I don’t bother to report most Apple rumors here. (I do cover ones that seems utterly plausible or utterly implausible–they’re the two best kind.) I do read them on other sites, though. And I’ve decided to perform a public service by rounding up a bunch of them. I figure that the chances are virtually 100 percent that at least a handful of the “scoops” after the jump are spot on. Your job is to figure out which ones!

(Click on the headlines to read the stories.)

There you go. Feeling better informed now?

Back in February of 2009, I wrote a story called “A Consumer’s Guide to Apple Rumors,” in which I attempted to give advice on how to judge the possible veracity of rumors about the planet’s most rumored-about tech company. If I were tackling the topic today, I might use more recent examples…but I don’t think I’d change any of my fundamental tips. So here’s that story again.

And speaking of Apple rumors: what do you expect (or hope) to see at WWDC?

Then again, another smart guy, Chris Dixon, warns against assuming that Apple isn’t going to make HDTVs just because the current market doesn’t look Apple-esque at all. He also tweeted an intriguing thought, which I learned about from MG Siegler, who also thinks that an Apple HDTV isn’t unthinkable:

it would be interesting to go back and read the arguments about why Apple won't release a phone. eg carrier market power etc.—
chris dixon (@cdixon) April 16, 2011

Good idea!

Herewith, a few blog posts from years past that confidently explained why Apple surely wouldn’t release a phone, an iPod that worked like an iPhone, and a tablet. They’re all examples of what I’ve come to think of as the “Apple will never” fallacy.

“Why Apple won’t make a cell phone”

By: Jon Stokes, Ars Technica, April 12th, 2003

The gist: Stokes says that he was convinced by an analyst quoted in a Ziff Davis story about why “Apple won’t go near the cell phone business anytime soon.” Sadly, he also says that “I won’t try to summarize his arguments, here, but they’re worth reading”–but he links to an article that’s turned into a dead link. I can’t track down the story to see what rationale the analyst offered, but it was apparently compelling in its logic.

[UPDATE: With the help of an Archive.org link from commenter Mart, I found the story that Jon Stokes linked to. Turns out it's by my friend Ross Rubin, who cites the following reasons why an Apple phone isn't in the offing: Apple won't want to squabble with carriers for customer ownership; a phone wouldn't have a clear connection to the Mac; competition is fierce; and Apple doesn't have the necessary technology. All plausible arguments against an Apple phone, and it did take Apple years to overcome them...]

The reality: Apple entered the phone market less than four years later.

Mitigating factor(s): The analyst apparently said that Apple won’t make a phone “anytime soon”–and in April of 2003, the iPhone was still years away. [UPDATE: Actually, Ross thought there wouldn't be an iPhone "at least as long as Steve Jobs stays as close to Apple's head as a black mock turtleneck."]

“Why an Apple Phone Would Suck, Leading Me to Believe it will Never Happen”

By: Alan Storm, AlanStorm.com, August 4th, 2006

The gist: Cost-reduction had reduced recent Mac hardware to a level of unreliability that would be unacceptable in a phone. An Apple phone would have to run on an existing network, “dooming the iPhone to a shitty experience.” Syncing wouldn’t work well. And the phone market was too commoditized for a high-priced Apple phone to succeed.

The reality: A little over five months later, Apple announced the iPhone. It certainly isn’t free of hardware glitches, but they don’t seem to have hurt it in the market. Nor has its reliance on existing, far-from-perfect (coughAT&T) network infrastructure. MobileMe appears to have solved the syncing issue acceptably, and the iPhone had a major impact even at $599 before Apple brought the starting price down to $199.

Mitigating factor(s):  Storm ends by saying that he thinks an Apple phone is “unlikely,” rather than declaring that it simply isn’t going to happen.

“Why you won’t be buying an iPhone-like iPod anytime soon”

By: David Chartier, TUAW, May 28th, 2007

The gist: Apple would want to recoup its investment in the iPhone–which, when Chartier wrote his item, hadn’t yet shipped–by milking it for profits, leading the company to postpone an iPhone-like iPod “for at least a year or two, or possibly longer (and even then we might be subject to the fated Newton Syndrome, where Jobs banishes the design to the Cupertino Dungeon, never to be heard from again).”

The reality: Apple announced the iPod touch–an iPhone-like iPod–on September 5th, 2007, a little over three months after Chartier’s story.

Mitigating factor(s): At the end, Charier sneaks a “likely” into his summary: “If you want to get fingers-on with your iTunes media, the iPhone will likely be your only shot in the near – or possibly far – future.”

“Keep dreaming and hoping, we won’t see an Apple tablet anytime soon”

By: Matthew Miller, ZDNet, February 3rd, 2009

The gist: An Apple tablet “would be a very cool device and would sell a few thousand,” but it would likely be cost at least $700–too pricey in a world of $300 netbooks. Besides, tablets have only done well in niche markets such as healthcare, and people won’t want to give up physical keyboards.

The reality: Apple announced the iPad a little under thirteen months after Miller’s post. It started at $499. After nine months on the market, it had sold 14.8 million units, which presumably counts as more than a few thousand.

Mitigating factor(s): Um, Miller does say at one point that he  ”highly doubt(s)” an Apple tablet is on its way. And does thirteen months later count as enough time passing that the headline’s flat declaration “we won’t see an Apple tablet anytime soon” was accurate?

“My theory on the Apple Tablet: It doesn’t exist, will never exist, and it is probably a 10 inch laptop”

By: Stefan Constantinescu, IntoMobile, August 3rd, 2009

The gist: Constantinescu ambitiously recaps seven years of Apple-tablet reviews–far-fetched stuff like “the device will have a screen 7 to 10 inches large, cost between $500 and $700, and that the CPU running inside the iTablet would be custom built by P.A. Semi which Apple purchased a while back”–and largely dismisses them as traffic-whoring “bullshit.”  An Apple tablet, he says, would be too heavy and, because its screen would be unprotected, too likely to sustain damage in a bag. But he does think that Apple will release a laptop with a 10″–or maybe 11.6″–display.

The reality: Less than five months later, Apple finally confirmed years of rumors by announcing the iPad (along with a case to protect its screen, although it used Gorilla Glass to make the display amazingly sturdy).

Mitigating factor(s): Constantinescu refers to his stance as a “theory” in the headline, but ends his piece in a defiantly definitive manner: “There is no Apple Tablet, there never will be an Apple Tablet, and just in case you were wondering: I am a PC.” Then again, he was right about the 11.6″ Apple laptop, which turned out to be the new MacBook Air that Apple announced in October of 2010.

It’s worth noting that while all of these stories turned out to be wrong, that doesn’t mean that the folks who wrote them were clueless. Some of their rationales, in fact, were darn logical–they just happened to be erroneous. Very few people outside of Apple have a knack for channeling Steve Jobs’ thought process. And even if you understand Apple better than most people, it will surprise you at least some of the time. Declaring that it will never do something is always dangerous.

Which is why I’m taking the only safe possible stance on the question of whether Apple is going to sell an HDTV: it is. Or it isn’t. I just don’t know, and neither do you. But it is fascinating to see more Applewatchers warm up to the idea that it’s a possibility. That’s the same evolution that has happened in the past with other potential Apple products that seemed unlikely at first. Such as a phone, a phone-like iPod, and a tablet…

In a report for InformationWeek, Claburn writes that Motorola is building its own web-based operating system as a way to curb its reliance on Google’s Android. Motorola has reportedly hired mobile and web engineers away from Apple and Adobe, but its not clear whether this rumored OS is anywhere near completion.

Except, Motorola already has a web-based OS that’s complete and on the market right now. I’m talking about Webtop, the software that runs on the Motorola Atrix’s laptop dock and set-top dock. If it didn’t have a little window for running the phone’s Android apps, there’d be nothing Google about it.

Okay, so Motorola refers to Webtop as an “application” instead of an OS, but that’s not really the case. Just one look at the software reveals all the trimmings of an operating system, from the tray full of applications — in this case, web apps — on the bottom of the screen to the full version of Firefox that is Webtop’s main attraction. If Google’s bare-bones Chrome OS is an operating system, so is Webtop.

I’m not bringing this up to poke holes in Claburn’s story. Quite the opposite: I think Webtop is a pretty good indicator of where Motorola is headed. The company has already said that Webtop and its modular docks are coming to more devices. If Webtop becomes more prominent in Motorola devices over time, I could see the company adapting the OS for smartphones or tablets.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Web apps aren’t ready to handle all the functions that native smartphone apps currently provide. Even Google, champion of web services, has released native iPhone apps for Google Latitude and Google Voice. The Webtop platform allows Motorola to test the waters, but if the company really is working a fully web-based smartphone platform, I doubt that it’ll be ready anytime soon.

But the current back-and-forth over a rumored iPhone Nano is rare. You don’t often see the New York Times directly refuting Apple rumors that appear in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. And you definitely don’t see the kind of confrontational undertone that the Times exuded in its scoop.

Yes, the Times’ Miguel Helft and Nick Bilton write, Apple wants to broaden the iPhone’s appeal with a cheaper model (and more voice commands), but no, there is no smaller iPhone. The article then proceeds to take down the iPhone Nano rumor piece-by-piece: A smaller device wouldn’t necessarily be cheaper to manufacture, says one source, and it would be harder to operate. It would also force developers to rewrite their apps, causing fragmentation that Apple definitely does not want.

The nail in the coffin is the Times’ last paragraph, which calls out the Wall Street Journal (but not by name) for outing the smaller iPhone’s code name as “N97.” Actually, the Times says, that was the code name designated for Verizon’s iPhone 4. Ouch.

I’m persuaded by the Times’ version of the story, but don’t know if there’s a big takeaway other than the fact that sometimes, Apple rumors are wrong (and I’m guessing most people know that already). Still, there’s one other nugget in the Times’ report that seems plausible: A cheaper iPhone would reportedly be a way for Apple to break into the prepaid phone market, particularly outside the United States where carrier subsidies and contracts are uncommon. I hadn’t thought of that when I said carrier subsidies are the key to Apple’s profits.

Okay, Bloomberg doesn’t actually call it the “iPhone Nano.” But the reporters’ unnamed sources, who were reportedly “briefed on the plans,” say that Apple intends to release a smaller, cheaper iPhone in hopes of slowing Android’s growth.

Wait a minute. Apple already sells a cheaper iPhone, the 8 GB iPhone 3GS. A few weeks ago, Apple permanently dropped the price to $49 making it the least expensive iPhone yet. But Bloomberg suggests that the mini-iPhone will be even cheaper, selling for $200 without a carrier contract.

Before we dig into that claim, here’s a brief history of iPhone Nano rumors: Weeks after the original iPhone went on sale, JP Morgan analyst Kevin Chang said Apple would release an iPhone that resembled the iPod Nano, citing people in the supply channel. The Daily Mail followed up in August 2008, with a similar (read: silly) claim that the smaller iPhone would have a scroll wheel on the back. iDealsChina offered more scuttlebutt later that year, but without specifics. And in January 2009, Taiwan’s Economic Daily News reported that a pair of electronics manufacturers were close to winning iPhone Nano chip contracts. Obviously, none of those reports resulted in an iPhone smaller than the one Apple releases every summer.

Anyway, the interesting thing about Bloomberg’s report is not that Apple is reportedly considering a smaller iPhone, but that Apple could make an iPhone cheap enough to bypass the carrier subsidy business model that is pervasive in the United States.

I have my doubts; Apple makes big profits by selling phones for $600 and relying on carriers to foot most of the bill. Then again, Apple’s Verizon iPhone 4 contains a new chip that can theoretically run on CDMA (Verizon, Sprint) and GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile) networks. Maybe Apple thinks it can sell a lot more phones by giving people the freedom to move between carriers.

It all seems a little lofty to me, but if the iPhone Nano happens as Bloomberg describes it, it’ll be huge.