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The additional launch countries are Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the UK.
A week later, the phone will be available in 22 more countries, including Italy, Poland and Spain.
In the U.S., pre-orders will start on Friday, Sept. 14.
The phone is thinner and ligher than the iPhone 4S, however has a taller screen, as expected. That makes an additional row of icons will have its place on the screen.
The iPhone 5 is the year's most eagerly waited for phone launch, and analysts expect Apple to sell tens of millions of units before the year is out.
The phone will cost the same as the iPhone 4S did when it debuted, starting at $ 199 with a two-year contract in the U.S. On the other hand, the price for the iPhone 4S will go down to $ 99 for new contract signers, and the iPhone 4 will be free.
With the new model, Apple is abandoning the connection port it's used for iPods, iPhones and iPads for almost a decade in favor of a more compact, narrower one. That implies Apple is still the holdout in an industry where additional manufacturers have settled on a common connector for charging and computer backups.
There will be adapters available so that the new phone will be able to connect to sound docks and other accessories created for the old phones.
Thanks to new innovation that gets rid of a separate touch-sensing layer in the screen, the phone is 18 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter in weight, said Apple marketing head Phil Schiller. He spoke at an Apple function in San Francisco.
The iPhone 5 will come with the capability to link to the fastest new wireless data networks, both in the U.S. and overseas. That's an additional feature that was widely expected. Some rivaling phones in the U.S. have had this capability for a year and an half.
The camera on the back of the iPhone 5 has the very same resolution as the one on the iPhone 4S, but takes pictures faster and functions better in low light, Apple said.
The front-facing camera is getting an upgrade to high-definition, letting users benefit from the faster data networks for videoconferencing.
The iPhone 5 will arrive with a new version of Apple's operating system, iOS. It will be available for download to earlier phones on Sept. 19.
Apple shares are up $ 2.76, or 0.4 percent, to $ 663.35 in afternoon trading.
One feature missing from the new phone is a chip for near-field communications, or NFC. Other top-of-the-line phones are integrating such chips, which let phones work as credit cards at some store payment input devices. They also enable phones to share data when "bumped" into each other.
