New York Times reports that according to an Apple employee who did not want to be named, iPhone 5 announcement is just weeks away, in line with what some of the rumors have suggested.

Interestingly, NYT also claims that the design of the Case-Mate cases that briefly showed up on their website few hours back are “authentic”.

NYT reports:

We’re just weeks away from the announcement of the new Apple iPhone 5, according to an Apple employee who asked not to be named because he was not allowed to speak publicly for the company.

On Thursday the technology blog Boy Genius Report posted images of a new iPhone case from the site of a company called Case-Mate. The images were visible on the company’s site for a short period of time before they were replaced with a curiously cryptic page that says, “We’ll have your cases when you have your new iPhone.”

From descriptions I’ve heard of the new iPhone from Apple employees, the images seemed potentially authentic.

NYT reports that according to an engineer familiar with the new iPhone, it will:

• be fairly different from the iPhone 4 — including on the inside
• come with an eight-megapixel camera
• have a faster A5 dual-core processor

NYT also reports that either the iPhone 5 or iPhone 6 will include a new chip that is made by Qualcomm, which will include near-field communication technology, known as NFC., that can be used to make contactless mobile payments by waving the phone over an NFC. reader.

NYT hasn’t provided any new details about the next generation iPhone, but it gives some credibility to the various rumors and speculations we’ve heard so far, which indicate that Apple will launch a redesigned iPhone 5.

We hope that Apple launches a redesigned iPhone 5.