Well I just watched the live Apple announcement for the iPhone 5 and it certainly looks really good. There are a lot of new features but a couple bad features so lets look into these now.
Apple iPhone 5 new Features
Better Processor – The processor in the iPhone 5 is an A6 processor and is roughly twice as fast as the old processor. If you are moving from an iPhone 4 and jumping all the way to the iPhone 5 it is going to be a substantial change and makes everything from launching apps to taking pictures and video much faster and crisper.
IOS 6 – New version of the operating system on the iPhone but as much as this is going to be great it is actually going to be able to be installed on all iPhones and iPads
18% thinner and Bigger– the iPhone 5 has a taller display and is thinner so now we are able to have more room on screen which will be really nice. There are now 5 rows of apps instead of the current 4 and of course the iPhone 5 has a retina display of over 200 dpi
LTE Support and dual band wireless – LTE is the new generation of cellular mobile data and is actually faster than most peoples wireless connections. That being said there is also a change in the wireless in that it has Dual band using two antennas this means that on a home network you can have very very fast speeds compared to now.
New Maps app – The maps app that used to leverage Google Maps is now an inhouse app for Apple and seemed to look quite good. We will all have to do a bit of looking around to see how it measures up to the old Goolge Maps based Maps app.
8 megapixel camera – the new iPhone is really going to be great with the same resolution as the iPhone 4S but with better optics and very good low light pictures. I have always found that the iPhone has been terrible in low light so really looking forward to this. Also the video is now 1080p which is much better than before and will take advantage of the new processor to get rid of some of that jerkiness when you record videos.
Better front camera – 720p hi def which if really good and especially with Facetime over cellular networks the video will be nice and crisp even though it will eat up the bandwidth – and increase your cell bill
Better microphone – The microphone is used for Siri as well as any video recording and phone calls and the phone will now have three microphones and better sound. This is really nice as Apple is also updating Siri and allow her to launch apps by voice now.
Same price as iPhone 4S – this seems to be an Apple policy. Give you new features, better device and keep the price the same.
Shipping in a week and a half – So this thing is going to be out really quick even though IOS 6 is still a couple weeks away for other platforms
Missing features and Drawback of the iPhone 5
New Lightning connector – there is a new connector for the iphone which will really suck! I have 3 iphones, 1 ipad, 2 itouch’s in the house and they all share connector cables. With the new iphone having a new connector means that we will lose interoperability with our charging devicesand they
No Wireless charging – Wireless charging would be an awesome new feature to have and some people actually do this through third part “charging pads” no idea why Apple doesn’t build this in as a stock feature.
No additional memory ports – like Micro-USB or USB cable connectivity. These would be nice and most Android devices already have them.
No Near Field Communications – so like IR access to other non-Apple devices. I know that I used the iPhione and iPad for AppleTV but can not use them for XBOX which would be nice.
So in the end I think this is in fact the greatest mobile phone ever made. There are a couple of drawback but really the iPhone 5 is falling in at the perfect time in the buying cycle as people are getting ready to get rid of their old iPhone 4 and the technology jump will be huge. The phone will still be easy to use but is far more rich functionally as well as having a much faster processor.
