iOS 5 for iPhone and iPad Going Gold September 30th?

We all know that the next version of the iPhone is coming, and that it’ll probably be coming to Sprint. In fact, we’ve got quite a lot of evidence of both: Sprint equipment being installed near Apple stores, Sprint shushing its employees about the possibility of some sweet iPhone action, Apple order CDMA parts.

But, even if it isn’t true, the iPhone is definitely due for a refresher, and that appears to be coming fast and furious. But what will this golden ticket, er, master contain for features?

Unlike the iPhone 5, which Apple naturally treats as if it’s completely secret (although all rumors point to essentially it being a smaller iPad in terms of power), Apple’s happy to chat up its iOS 5 features. Here are some of the more interesting parts:

• Apple has revamped notifications: instead of your being constantly interrupted by alerts that you’ve gotten yet another Nigerian spam email, a little bar pops down at the top of the screen to be swiped down if you want to check it. You can also check voicemails from the lock screen.
• iMessage basically allows you to text other Apple products for free. That’s…great, we guess.
• Twitter is directly integrated into the system, which is yet another rude gesture right in Facebook’s general direction. You’ve got to wonder what the House of Zuck has done to offend the biggest consumer products company in the world: they’re not mentioned at all.
• The biggest deal: the products are now completely independent and don’t need a computer to function. You can just set them up and run them. Considering Apple has already cornered a big chunk of the mobile market, this will make owning a tablet as your main computer just that much easier.

How about you? What feature are you looking forward to? Which one would you like to see?