The new iPhone 5 is thinner, lighter, and much faster
After months of anticipation, the iPhone 5 has finally been announced! It will be the thinnest and lightest iPhone to date, at 7.6mm thin, and 112 grams. It will also be the world’s thinnest smartphone..
The iPhone 5 screen is taller than the screens on the iPhones that preceded it. The display offers 326 pixels per inch, with a 4-inch screen and 1136 x 640 resolution.
There’s now a fifth row of icons on the taller home screen, and all of Apple’s native apps, along with the iWork and iLife suites, have been updated on the iPhone 5 to take advantage of the larger display. The Calendar app in landscape shows five days instead of three.
Apps that aren’t updated don’t stretch or scale, they will display letterboxed on the iPhone, with black borders surrounding the centered app.
The iPhone 5 offers 44 percent more color saturation than the iPhone 4S and because the touch sensors are integrated right into the display, it’s 30 percent thinner, with sharper imagery, and less glare in sunlight.
New to the iPhone 5 is LTE, HSPA+, and DC-HSDPA support. That’s on top of the GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, and HSPA that the iPhone 4S offered. With LTE, the iPhone 5 can achieve a theoretical maximum downlink of up to 100Mbps.
The processor in the iPhone 5 is the brand new Apple A6, which is twice as fast at CPU and graphics processing compared to the A5 that drove the iPhone 4S. It is 22 percent smaller than its predecessor, freeing up more space inside the iPhone, and making it more energy efficient. According to Apple everything will be twice as fast which includes launching apps, viewing attachments and loading music.
EA debuted Real Racing 3, which included real-time reflections, functional rear view mirrors, and “console quality” graphics, according to EA Studios’s Rob Murray. (The game will hit the App Store later this year.)
The battery life exceeds the battery life of the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 will offer eight hours of 3G talk time and browsing and LTE browsing, ten hours of Wi-Fi browsing, ten hours of video, 40 hours of music, and 225 hours of standby time.
The iPhone 5’s camera has an eight megapixel sensor, 3264 by 2448 pixel images. It’s backside illuminated, with a hybrid IR filter, five-element lens, and a fast f/2.4 aperture. The camera is 25 percent smaller than the iPhone 4S’s camera. The camera also includes a dynamic low-light mode, which can sense low light and combine elements for two f-stops greater.
The camera also includes a sapphire lens cover, will protect the lens and make images cleaner and sharper.
The A6 chip includes a new image signal processor, with spatial noise reduction and filtering to improve photographs. And the camera’s now 40 percent faster, too.
Also new with the iPhone 5’s camera is Panorama. You hold the iPhone vertically and sweep your scene; the app tells you at what speed to move.
The iPhone 5 offers 1080p HD video, improved video stabilization, face detection for up to ten faces, and can take photos while you’re recording video. The front-facing camera is now a FaceTime HD 720p HD camera with backside illumination, which is a significant improvement over the iPhone 4S’s VGA-quality front-facing camera.
The iPhone 5 includes three separate microphones. One on the front, one on the back, and one on the bottom. They improve noise cancellation and voice recognition.
The speaker has been improved as well. It now includes five magnets in its transducer, with better frequency response and better sound. It is 20 percent smaller than the speaker in the iPhone 4S. The earpiece is now noise-canceling as well.
The iPhone 5 abandons the familiar 30-pin dock connector port, which first appeared with the original iPod in 2003. In its place is a smaller port, which Apple calls Lightning.
The 8-signal Lightning connector is all-digital, with an adaptive interface and improved durability. It’s reversible and it’s 80 percent smaller than the connector it replaces.
Adapters will be offered, but there was no mention on pricing.
The iPhone 5 will come in an all black model, and a white model with a bright silver aluminum finish.
The iPhone 5 will be available September 21 in the U.S with pre-orders starting on September 14. It costs $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, and $399 for 64GB-the same pricing as the iPhone 4S that preceded it. The iPhone 4S drops to $99; and the iPhone 4 is now the free, entry-level iPhone. All those prices require two-year commitments.
