by Bill Palmer

The iPhone 5 will see its release date in June, according to too many sources to count at this point. And while that’s good news for those who have been hoping the new iPhone would arrive sooner than later, it brings a whole new round of upgrade eligibility issues for Verizon and AT&T customers who are already in the iPhone family. AT&T’s policies allow iPhone users to become eligible for upgrade pricing either twelve or eighteen months after their last iPhone purchase, depending on a complicated formula which includes factors such as the size of your monthly bill and the last time you made a late payment. The iPhone 4S arrived late last year, meaning that by June of 2012 it’ll only have been on the market for eight to nine months. For the first time ever, literally no one in the United States who bought the current iPhone will be able to buy the iPhone 5 on its release date for advertised pricing. The story doesn’t get any better for Verizon customers…

The Verizon iPhone 4 launched in the spring of 2011, eight months after its AT&T iPhone 4 counterpart. Verizon’s standard upgrade eligibility policy is at twenty months, meaning that no one who bought the iPhone 4 or the iPhone 4S from Verizon will be able to buy the iPhone 5 at standard pricing when it launches either. So just who will be buying the iPhone 5 on its release date? That group will consist of AT&T iPhone 4 users who bought early enough to be upgrade eligible by this summer, iPhone 3GS users who arguably should have upgraded awhile ago, and those BlackBerry and Android users who’ve decided to make the switch but have been waiting for the iPhone 5 to land before making the jump. Those who bought an iPhone 4S at launch, or who bought the iPhone 4 late enough in the game that they won’t be eligible either, will be facing a financial fiasco when it comes to the iPhone 5…

The simplest move is to simply stick with what they have. Apple typically releases its new iPhone system software for free to users of the previous two generations, and if history holds up, most of the new software features will work on the iPhone 4S while some of them will be enabled on the slower iPhone 4. So those users who aren’t upgrade eligible will at least be able to partake in some of Apple’s new circa-2012 iPhone features. Another move is to wait until upgrade eligibility arrives and then pounce on the iPhone 5. It won’t be on launch day, but it’ll happen at some point during the iPhone 5 era for all existing iPhone users. The aggressive play is to buy the iPhone 5 on its release date and pay the $200-$250 overage fee, but then sell your existing iPhone in an online auction where it’ll fetch way more than its sticker price and more than cover the overage fee (for instance, an iPhone 4 still sells for more than $300 on eBay). Finally, there’s the play in which you call up AT&T or Verizon and threaten to switch to the other unless they move up your eligibility date to match the release date of the iPhone 5. We’ve seen it work, so long as you’re not more than a few months away from being upgrade eligible to begin with. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.