With the purported Sept. 12 debut date of the iPhone 5 nearing, iFans have seen a cascade of rumors and leaks which have focused on the smartphone's features, physical attributes, and assembled parts. The recent photo leak, courtesy of Apple.HDBlog, gives Apple aficionados a peek at the next-generation smartphone's packaging.

On Aug. 27, Apple.HDblog spotted the leaked photos of iPhone 5's alleged packaging.

"The image appeared on the popular Chinese social network Weibo and we literally grabbed it, because the author, who does not want to reveal his identity, he deleted a few minutes after it is published," stated the Apple.HDblog post (translated).

The blog post goes on to claim that the message "Here is the new iPhone 5 long! PS. At the home of a friend who works in the production of packaging" accompanied the original image.

Apple.HDblog asserted that the image could be genuine but offered no guarantees.

"Despite this vast amount of detail, the image, just because it portrays a print, you may still be a fake, made ​​by a skilled designer who decided to publish on the web and immediately withdraw its creation," the blog post cautioned.

The leaked image indicates that the cover of the box reads "iPhone 5". Apple called its current iPad "the new iPad" and is likely to refer to the new smartphone as "new iPhone, so the box is unlikely to be labelled "iPhone 5."

The alleged iPhone 5 box has two Apple logos at either end. This convention was followed for the older iPhone boxes, but is obsolete for the current lot; since the Cupertino-based firm introduced iCloud, every iPhone and iPod box has an Apple logo on one end and an iCloud logo on the other. Moreover, the logo's text size is circumspect smaller than that on the current iPhone 4S box.

The authenticity of the leaked packaging images remains under scrutiny, and like all Apple rumors, this one should be taken with a pinch of salt.