The iPhone 5
Apple have stolen the show, again, and maintained brand loyalty, perhaps to its strongest level yet. The iPhone 5 is good, really good. Taller, thinner, lighter and faster. It’s the world’s thinnest smartphone at just 7.6mm thick and just 3.95 ounces. That’s lighter than a packet of crisps. The taller handset fits in an extra row of apps on-screen and at 4 inches tall also allows for a 16:9 widescreen retina display. However, the screen width remains the same as its predecessors for ‘hand comfort’, a major plus for those of us who have to text with one hand. The camera capabilities however, remain the same as the 4S, but you can now take photos while filming.
The iPhone 5 will have 4G LTE connectivity. Roughly translated – ‘it is really really fast.’ More importantly for Apple though, it has finally caught up with Samsung, who conquered 4G LTE long ago. Apple claim that it is so fast it might even be preferable to your home wifi connection. Let’s not forget about the new programming too, iOS 6 brings with it a goldmine of new features. Powered by the new A6 chip it includes an hypnotic 3D map system with beautiful new vector graphics (that’s ‘cool imagery’ to you and I). Siri has also been given a makeover and now graduates to a ‘helpful assistant’ compared with the fun but dumb ‘friendly companion’ with the iPhone 4S…
Social networking now feels a lot more central to the whole iPhone experience, being able to post things from the notifications screen seems an obvious update in hindsight as it works very well. Battery life has been vastly juiced up too, with 8 hours of 3G talk time and 3G browsing, 8 hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of WiFi, 10 hours video playback, 40 hours music playback and 225 hours of standby. In fact, the only potential critical thing that has changed is the port connector. Exchanging the classic 30 pin connector for the 80 percent smaller ‘lightning’ connector, Apple has alienated countless previous products, making it incompatible with literally everything. One can’t help but conclude this is a business ploy to drive new sales of new iPhone 5 accessories. An annoyingly ‘smart’ phone you might say.
Starting at £199, apple.com
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