It’s finally here; the curtain has finally been raised and all revealed about the latest iPhone from Apple, the iPhone 5. The unveiling took place last night, as expected, at the media event Apple had scheduled in San Francisco.
After all of the anticipation and all of the hype, it turns out that the iPhone 5 was pretty much just as we expected it was going to be in the first place. Pretty much every rumour was spot on, right down to the leaked pictures of the device which have floating around the internet for the past months – they were spot on!
To be honest, it was a little disappointing that Apple didn’t manage to keep one thing hidden or secret until the unveiling, I was hoping for at least one surprise to come with the iPhone 5, but it didn’t. So, let’s take an in-depth look into the iPhone 5 and exactly what Apple told us about the new device.
You can start by watching the Official iPhone 5 Video here:
The design changes:
This iPhone was more highly anticipated than some of its predecessors, notably because it brought us an all new design. The iPhone 5 is 18% slimmer than the iPhone 4S, making it the thinnest iPhone yet. It boasts a 4-inch Retina display which runs at a resolution of 1136 x 640 with a 16:9 screen ratio. The iPhone 5 uses a new type of screen technology which delivers 44% more colour saturation than the 4S.
The screen has been made slightly taller on the iPhone 5, offering space on the screen for an extra row of app icons (and of course extra space for your apps to run). The screen is the same width as it was on the iPhone 4S, it’s only the height which has changed there.
The iPhone 5 is only 7.6mm thick, and 20% lighter than the iPhone 4S – weighing in at just 112g. Personally, I liked the weight of the iPhone 4S, it felt premium, like it was worth the money, I hope that the iPhone 5 still has this kind of weight to it.
Super-fast 4G LTE Networking:
As we expected, the latest iPhone brings us the next step in ultrafast mobile broadband – 4G LTE. The iPhone 5 has a dynamic antenna which they say gives them an ‘Apple Advantage’, and the device has a single chip for radio, and a single chip for voice and data.
Apple is working with huge numbers of carriers to provide 4G LTE Globally. In the US it will be available on Sprint, AT&T and Verizon, and in the UK it will be Everything Everywhere (the T Mobile and Orange collaboration network)
WiFi has also been improved on the device, allowing for speeds of up to 150Mbps.
Processing Improvements:
Last year we had the A5 processor, and this year we have the A6; it’s twice as fast as its predecessor both in terms of processing power and graphics power which should make it outperform the 4S by a long shot. The A6 chip is around 22% smaller than the A5 from the 4S.
Battery Improvements:
The battery is something which could easily be improved on from the iPhone 4S. When you have so many features on a device, you expect the battery life to drain down pretty quickly, but with the iPhone 5 they have some impressive specs. Apparently the new battery on the iPhone 4 will allow up to 8 hours of 3G talk time and LTE browsing. It could also power your device through 10 hours of WiFi browsing, and will last up to 225 hours on standby!
iSight Camera:
The camera has been improved on somewhat since the iPhone 4S too, although not as much as one might expect. It’s still an 8MP camera, snapping shots at an impressive 3264 x 2448 resolution. The new camera is a quarter smaller than the 4S camera (that’s 25% smaller), 40% quicker and features an all new panorama mode. The addition of the A6 chip to the iPhone 5 also helps with the camera, allowing better noise reduction and improved low-light performance.
The iPhone 5 can record in 1080p HD, it has better image stabilization, now features face detection for up to 10 faces, and allows you to capture photographs while you’re shooting video footage.
The front facing video camera has also been improved, it’s now able to capture 720p HD video and photo’s which is a huge upgrade from the low quality VGA camera which we had previously seen on the iPhone 4 and 4S.
Lightning Dock Connector:
The rumour regarding the new smaller dock connector design also turned out to be true. Apple have finally revamped the dock connector and given it a new name ‘Lightning’, it replaces the old 30-pin dock connector with its new 8-pin design. The new dock is 80% smaller than its predecessor, freeing up some space inside the device for other things.
There will be an adapter available for $29 to convert your Lightning to a 30 pin adapter – this will be available next month.
And that’s about it! Everything we thought we knew, we did actually know – I still can’t believe how badly Apple kept the iPhone 5 and its features secret. There isn’t one thing about the iPhone 5 that we didn’t already have an idea of.
There are a couple of other small changes, for example, the speaker now has five magnets instead of two – allowing better quality sound whilst taking up about 20% less space. There is also a number of noise cancelling improvements on the device.
Don’t forget about iOS 6 either.
That brings a whole heap of changes, new features and even all new apps. It’s just as big an update as the iPhone 5 hardware updates. Maps in particular is an app which I’m looking forward to seeing in iOS 6 – it features live turn-by-turn GPS, with real-time traffic information – from the previews I’ve seen, it looks like it has a better interface than my current standalone TomTom unit, so I am really looking forward to that one – I think getting into the GPS / Navigation scene is a good move for Apple, especially with Siri’s interaction… it makes everything so much easier.
I won’t go into iOS 6 too much here, as you’ve probably already read quite a bit about it – we’ve known about iOS 6 for some time now. This post was more about the iPhone 5 and the updates we saw to that last night, so let’s finish up…
Pricing and Availability:
The iPhone 5 will come in three different hard drive sizes, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. These will cost $199, $299 and $399 respectively on two year contracts – so it’s not going to be cheap, at all. Pre-orders start on September 14th (tomorrow!!) and iPhone 5 orders will start shipping on September 21st.
iOS 6 will be available to download in a few days, on September 19th. It will be available on the iPhone 4S, 4, 3Gs and the new iPad, iPad 2 and the 4G iPod Touch.
I hope you are not too disappointed with the lack of surprise from this event, after-all, its still an awesome phone and definitely the best iPhone yet. I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
What do you think of the iPhone 5? Will you buy pre-ordering one or are you getting bored with iPhone? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
Author Bio: Nathan loves all Apple products, especially the iPhone. You can even Unlock the iPhone 5 at his website Unlock iPhone Worldwide.
3 Comments
Still we don’t know exactly the specs of the A6…
Dual Core with 2x GHz of A5 or Quad Core?
Good job with the post (The only thing you didn’t mentioned is the EarPods)
Hi,
General consensus on the internet is that the A6 chip runs two ARM Cortex A15 cores, quad-core GPU. Also the earpods were more of an extra accessory which is why it was not mentioned but still good shout. What do you think of the iPhone 5? Will you be buying?
I agree with you about the iPhone 5,it’s the best iphone yet.
I ‘m not disappointed from the event for lack of surprise(we all know how Apple present their products after SJ) but for the leakages of the desing and even the Eardrops.
Despite this fact,I like very much the aluminium in the back and the 3 mic.(I wanted to have NFC)
Still have the iphone 3gs and I ‘m very satisfied with it so I will buy my next iphone when the 3gs die!!!