iPhone 3.0 Betas and iTunes 8.2 Pre-Releases are pouring out of Apple like pancakes from IHOP on a Sunday morning. Apple today released iPhone 3.0 Beta 5 (Build 7A312g) and a new iTunes 8.2 pre-release to developers. Only 8 days after beta 4 being released this release was a surprise.

At this time, there’s no word on any new features on beta 5 but there’s surely some big bug or security fixes that made Apple release this new beta just 8 days after releasing beta 4. Like the previous beta, iTunes 8.2 pre-release is required to install beta 5.

With only a month to go until Apple’s sold out Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco where the iPhone OS 3.0 is certain to be a featured topic of discussion, Apple may be increasing the pace of developer releases to begin polishing things for the public showing.

The folks at Ars Technica are reporting that further evidence of future unreleased hardware is lurking around in the latest iPhone 3.0 beta software update. While exploring the unknowns of the iPhone 3.0 updated system files, a developer discovered references to two new iPhone models and what appears to be another iPod Touch model. Two other unknown pieces of hardware are also referenced as “iProd” and “iFPGA.”

The mystery devices, iPhone2,1, iPhone3,1, iPod3,1, iFPGA, and iProd0,1, are named in the “USBDeviceConfiguration.plist” property list found in /System/Library/AppleUSBDevice/. Also named in that list are the current iPhone and iPod models.

Ars Technica’s Chris Foresman explains:

In addition to these references [to current models], USBDeviceConfiguration.plist in iPhone OS 3.0 beta contains references to iPhone3,1; iPod3,1; iFPGA; and iProd0,1. All of the products are assigned unique productID numbers, though all are assigned a productString of iPhone. These details are reported to Mac OS X when the devices are plugged in via USB, and would show up in System Profiler, for instance.

Boy Genius is also reporting similar information:

“Apple normally makes their device IDs in chronological order, from first released to last released. Here is what I found very interesting for you. Quick, here is an example of the past devices:
iPhone First Gen – 0×1290
iPod touch 1G – 0×1291
iPhone 3G – 0×1292
iPod touch 2G – 0×1293
Then, here is what is found in the ramdisk:
iPhone2,1 – 0×1294
iProd0,1 – 0×1295
iPod2,2 – 0×1296
iPhone3,1 – 0×1297
iFPGA – 0×1298
iPod3,1 – 0×1299?

If anything new arises we’ll be sure to let you know!