The iphone 5 Image credits: Josh Lee If you re like me and thought the iphone 4S was a complete and utter disappointment and therefore didn t upgrade, the last few months of 2012 are looking mighty fine for you. Why? Well, because the iphone 5 is finally here! I know! I m so excited my hands are shaking on the keyboard. I opted for the white version mainly because every other iphone I ve had thus far has been black, but also because on the iphone 5, the black model uses a charcoal-colored aluminum band and rear cover whereas the white model uses Apple s traditional shimmering silver aluminum. At first glance, the iphone 5 is simply not that different from the iphone 4 and 4S. In fact, for the first week or so I had it, it was in an InCase slider case and no one noticed the difference until I slipped off the shiny white plastic and pulled out the beauty that is the iphone 5. Then people started to take notice.
Right out of the box, you notice how much attention Apple has devoted to the detail of this product. Just like all Apple products, the iphone 5 is incredibly well designed, engineered, and assembled. But Apple s taken it to a whole new level with the iphone 5. In fact, it makes the iphone 4 feel almost shoddy in its craftsmanship. And the 3GS with its plastic back and dated chrome bezel? Forget about it. Apple says multiple times in its PR material that the iphone 5 is built to the precision of a finely crafted watch. True? Yes, actually. When you compare the build quality of the iphone 5 to any other smartphone, believe me, the other phone will feel like a poorly crafted piece of plastic. It s like comparing a Mercedes Benz to a child s Cozy Coupe. It really is a work of art. When you get over the giddiness of opening up the box and pulling your new beauty out, you ll immediately notice the difference in weight. For someone who s carried an iphone for the last four years, it s immediately noticeable how much thinner and lighter the iphone 5 is. For comparison purposes in this review, we used an iphone 4 and the our new iphone 5. The weight difference is made more noticeable also by the difference in form factor. It s loss in volume helps to emphasize its loss in weight.
So the real question here is: what s the verdict on the screen? Well, in traditional Apple fashion, a jump in screen size was done differently in comparison to everyone and everything else in the smartphone industry. Most handset makers (Samsung, LG, Motorola) simply scaled up their screens when they made them larger. Meaning that they kept the aspect ratio the same (usually 3.2). That made scaling up all their applications and the entire user interface easy. Apple, on the other hand, decided to take a more novel approach. To go from 3.5 to 4-inches (diagonally), Apple simply stretched the screen vertically only, going from a 3:2 ratio to a 16:9 ratio. 16:9 is an important measurement here because 16:9 is the native aspect ratio of high definition media. Theater screens and most modern flat screen HDTV s are 16:9 screens. The new screen means that for those who carry movies around on their iphones, use Netflix, or YouTube will be able to view their movies full-screen without the letter-boxing you d get on any of the previous iphones or any other smartphone.
The above image shows a still from Robyn s Cobrastyle music video. The video plays full screen with no black stripes on either side of the screen. It s true that you could eliminate the letter boxing effect on previous iphones by double tapping on the screen, but that meant also cutting off the perpendicular edges to zoom in on the movie. With iphone 5, there s no compromise.
It s not just media playback, however. Everything on the phone benefits from the extra half inch of real estate. Applications that are primarily vertical have more space to display more. In Messages it s really nice to have the extra room so even if you re hammering out a longer message you can still see the conversation. In web browsing, you can see much more of the page than before. Reading articles on applications like Flipboard let you see more text without having to turn the page. It might not sound like much, but when you get one in your hands and start to explore iphone life on the bigger screen, you ll soon find that the screen on your 4 or 4S feels short. I have yet to find a single thing that loses out with the bigger screen. Even after just the first few hours I found that I was moving about the phone more quickly and easily than I had on the 4. And that s not to say that the iphone 4 s screen was small by any measure. I used it for over two years with no complaints or feelings of claustrophobia. And the amazing part is that Apple did all of this without making the phone feel like a huge un-grab-able slab like some Android phones (hello Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note) do. I personally have wanted a bigger screen for a few years, but wasn t willing to commit to a bloated overly-huge phone. The iphone 5 finds a happy middle ground and it works well.
The iphone 5 now features LTE data connectivity, or as its more commonly referred to, 4G (on the top status bar you ll now see Verizon LTE rather than Verizon 3G ) 4G LTE is substantially faster than the 3G connection that all prior iphones have run on. In fact, LTE has a potential to reach up to 100MBPS (100 megabytes per second). That s insanely fast. It s not there yet, but we may see it in coming years. Even without the theoretical 100MBPS speed, the internet on iphone 5 screams. It loaded media-heavy pages like The New York Times in seconds flat. YouTube videos load almost instantly. If you re watching a 30-second clip, there s virtually no waiting time at all. It s great. Your own internet speeds will vary depending on your carrier of choice and your location (none of the carriers have fully rolled out their LTE networks yet), but expect faster speeds overall. My iphone 5 is on Verizon and through a week of testing in various locations in Los Angeles County, Orange County, and Ventura County, internet speeds have been at least threetimes faster than what I was getting on AT&T with my iphone 4. In fact, on multiple occasions I was able to hit 35MBPS. That s faster than most home broadband internet services. And that s saying something. Just like the bigger screen, it might not seem like such a huge deal, but when you get it in your hand and start playing with it, you ll feel just how much faster it is and wonder why you never realized your iphone 4 was slow.
One of the most controversial new features of the iphone 5 is its switch to Apple s new Lightning standard. Every Apple mobile product (ipods, iphones, ipads) have used a 30-pin connector. That s the standard white Apple cord that you have that you use to charge and connect to your computer. Well, it s been made obsolete. The new iphone, ipod Touch, and ipod nano all use the new Lightning standard. In the photo above, you can see the incredible difference in size between the new Lightning port on the iphone 5 and the older 30-pin port on the iphone 4. The problem with switching to an entirely new standard like this, of course, is that any accessories that you had for your iphone, whether it be a dock, alarm clock, car adapter, or what have you, you ll now need to either replace it or buy Apple s 30-pin to Lightning connector. I ll leave it up to you whether this was totally out of line or totally necessary. Having been one of those people that had 5 of Apple s white cables around (one in the car, one in the wall for charging, one at the desk with the computer, and one in my bag at all times), I m a little disappointed that they ve gotten rid of it. But at the same time, I realize that it was completely necessary to do so. It was essential to making the iphone 5 smaller and lighter and it ll power innovation in future Apple products for years to come. So yeah, we all have to buy new cords, but let s just suck it up and remember that our shiny new iphone 5 is totally worth it.
Also now on the bottom of the iphone is the headphone jack, which has always been at the top-left on iphones. I thought I d really dislike the change, but having used it and not had problems with its relocation, I don t really mind. And now, the top of the iphone looks incredibly clean with only the sleep/wake/power button. It s a nice change. You can see the iphone 5 and iphone 4 above for comparison. Again, notice the difference in size as well. The iphone 5 is a great new addition to the iphone family. It s a much needed upgrade for those with a 3GS or 4, and a nice little you shouldn t have bought that 4S! for iphone 4S owners. The iphone 5 follows all previous iphones, starting at $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model, and $399 for the 64GB model and is available now on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. Your best bet for getting one in hand today will be to go into an Apple store and pick it up in person. Online ordering has gotten pushed back to a 2-3 week delivery date. Ouch. It s because all of us Apple freaks pre-ordered starting at midnight. According to Apple s numbers, the iphone 5 sold (coincidentally) over five million units in its first weekend on the market. A record for Apple and the smartphone industry as a whole. We ll have more on the iphone 5 in the coming weeks and months, but for now, that s been your first look at the all-new iphone 5.