Some observers have been tipping the simultaneous announcement of the iPhone 5 (or whatever it's actually called) and the iPad mini (ditto) at a September event.

But Dow Jones owned All Things Digital - which has got such things right in the past - reports that "several sources" have confirmed the two new iOS devices will be launched at separate events.

The iPhone 5 launch is still tipped for September 12, with the iPad mini debut following in October.

An October launch would still be in good time for the Christmas (or if you prefer, the 'holiday') shopping season.

There have been persistent reports involving sources of varying credibility that the iPad mini will feature a 7.85in display.

The weight of opinion/evidence (and it's hard to tell the two apart when discussing information from anonymous sources) seems to be that it will not be a high-resolution Retina display, but will retain the 1024x768 resolution of the original iPad and the iPad 2.

At first glance, that would make life easy for app developers - but for users, a smaller display that simply scales everything down would be suboptimal in many situations (eg, text that is too small to read comfortably).