Many of you who have been closely following developments about Apple’s iPhone 5 will know that as a release approaches more things are coming to light. Today we can tell you that the pending iPhone 5 has led to Apple matching price drops on previous models and we also have the first purported images of the new iPhone 5 dock connector.

The release of the iPhone 5 has still not been officially confirmed although it is widely expected to be revealed at an event on September 12. This has led to the usual flurry of activity at some retailers and carriers eager to offload current stocks to make way for the newer model and therefore many have now started to initiate price cuts for currently available models. Although officially Apple’s stance is that the current on-contract prices still stand for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S it seems that in Apple retail stores at least, authorization has been granted for price matching other offers.

A report on MacRumors tells how price matches for approved retailers and carriers price deals are now available although the buyer will need to cite a source offering lower pricing to get the match. These Apple price matches then are not available online but only through Apple retail stores. MacWorld verified this information looking at deals offered on the iPhone 4 and 4S from sources such as Target, Radio Shack and Best Buy. When mentioning these other offers they were able to get Apple retail store representatives to match the prices.

As far as these current price cuts are concerned it’s certainly something we wouldn’t expect to see unless the next iPhone iteration was due very soon. Quite how soon after the September 12 unveiling is unsure although a date of September 21 for the release of the iOS 6 iPhone is heavily rumored. In other iPhone 5 news some of you will be familiar with a new 19-pin dock connector that has been highly rumored instead of the standard 30-pin connector and we recently told how this could be like the current MacBook MagSafe connector. There was also a rumor that this new connector might have 8-pins.

The first images claiming to be of the brand new connector for the iPhone 5 have now surfaced from French site Nowhereelse.fr, as reported by BGR. The images in fact show a 9-pin connector, significantly smaller than the current dock connector that Apple uses. At the moment we cannot verify this image but the same site has previously published other leaked components of the iPhone 5 so the new photos could certainly be the real deal and would fit with the current conjecture of a new dock connector.

We’d like to hear from readers with all your thoughts on the new iPhone 5. Are you heartened by the price cuts on current models, as it seems to reinforce the iPhone 5 is close? Are you a fan of the idea of a smaller dock connector for the next iPhone? What are you hoping for most from the iPhone 5? Send us your comments to let us know.