If you run iOS 5 beta 1 on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you might be interested to know the beta includes an automatic expiration date of August 4th.

For those with proper access to the newest beta releases from iOS Dev Center, this won’t be an issue as long as you upgrade to the newest betas as they become available from Apple. This leaves those who had a friend activate their UDID or who used the VoiceOver tweak to run iOS 5 on an iPhone without a dev account – this could very well effect you. If you are running the beta without a dev account, I suggest downgrading from iOS 5 beta before this becomes a potential problem, you don’t want to be stuck with a useless iPhone on August 5th.



The expiration date was discovered and tweeted by jailbreak developer @ih8sn0w last night:



This tip was sent to us suggesting it as a hint of the iOS 5 release date, which Apple has announced will be in Fall of this year, but I do not think that is the case. Most obvious is that August 4th is not in the Fall, but also there is the persistent rumor of a September iOS event, which to me seems like a good candidate for the new OS launch. You could also look at the Back to School Promo end date of September 20 as an indicator of a September event. Even though this years student promotion doesn’t offer an iPod touch, these promos typically end before a new iPod is released. That is just a hunch, but if Apple says Fall, I would believe it.

Thanks to Dean for sending this in via iDB.