Apple Phone In August? [Updated]

Contrary to recent reports, Engadget says that Apple's rumored "iPhone" may appear as early as August.

A reader is reporting to us that a coworker's tech-unsavvy friend, who is regularly hired by Apple to do marketing photo shoots, was recently brought on to take some shots of "the sleekest, sexiest damn phone he's ever seen."

It has been well-established that Apple has been working on an Apple-branded phone for some time, however the release date has been difficult to pinpoint. Recently, various patents (1, 2) have been uncovered regarding Apple's cell phone technology and Peter Oppenheimer made comments during Apple's Q3 2006 conference call virtually acknowledging Apple's work on the product, stating "We're not sitting around doing nothing" with regard to cell phones.

Update: Engadget points to an AppleInsider post revealing that the June 28th iPod updater package has some Phone related text strings such as "t_feature_app_PHONE_APP, kPhoneSignalStrength, clPhoneCallModel, clPhoneCallHistoryModel, prPhoneSettingsMenu".