One of the changes that’s been grinding around in the iPhone rumor mill for a few months now is a smaller dock connector. Back in May we brought you a story that the new iPhone would have a smaller dock connector and a larger display. Later, leaked images appeared to confirm both changes (as well as a repositioned headphone jack).

Now TechCrunch is reporting that they have confirmed the smaller dock connector. In a move they expect to “send shocks through the iPhone accessory ecosystem,” they say they’ve confirmed with “[t]hree independent manufacturers” that the new iPhone will have a 19-pin dock connector rather than the traditional 30-pin connector that was first introduced with the third-generation iPod all the way back in 2003. The reason behind this move is pretty clear: the new iPhone is likely to be getting some significant internal upgrades (e.g., 4G LTE and a better battery). Shrinking the dock connector and increasing the screen size are two ways to make extra room inside the iPhone’s case for all those extra goodies.

This news follows a story we brought you yesterday that also appears to confirm the new iPhone’s redesign. Drawings included by Apple in a patent on turn-by-turn navigation from a mobile device appeared to show the new iPhone, rather than any previous model. Most notably, the images in the patent show a FaceTime camera that is centered above the iPhone’s earpiece, rather than offset as in the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, and a much smaller dock connector.

While it’s always possible that all these various rumors are false, the fact that they’re all pointing the same direction strongly suggests that we already have a pretty good picture of what the new iPhone looks like. Unfortunately, we’ll still probably have to wait until October to know for sure, assuming an Apple engineer doesn’t leave one in a bar again.