Apple finally announced the much awaited iPhone 5 on September 12th with much fanfare. Apple never fails to create buzz for its phones. iPhone 5 is no exception. No other products create buzz like Apple products do, especially the iPhones. Be it design concepts of the new iPhone or possible features, the rumours and guessing game begins months before the actual product announcement. And the buzz created by Apple’s winning in Apple vs. Samsung Case(read: reputation blow to Samsung) won’t hurt either as iPhone 5 will eat some of Samsung’s share.
Here’s the list of features
the Apple flagship has to offer:
– Apple A6 processor which is 2x faster than A5 according to Apple.
-bigger 4.0″ Retina display with 11366×640 resolution(326 ppi)
-thinner and lighter metal frame at 7.6mm and 112g
-100Mb LTE support, dual-band WiFi support
-front camera with 720p video recording
-3 Microphones
-smaller Connector than the previous one(80% smaller)
-8MP Secondary Camera
WORTH THE MONEY?
To make your buying decision easier, let’s dig deeper into the feature list and look what the iPhone 5 has to offer.
PROCESSOR
According to Apple, the new A6 chip on the iPhone 5 promises 2X performance over the previous A5 chip which means smoother UI, faster loading of web pages, faster response time and better gaming. There’s no information available about number of cores or clock speed yet.
DISPLAY
Regarded as the crispest phone display in world, iPhone’s Retina Display got bigger and better. Measuring 4″ diagonally, it boasts of 326ppi pixel density with 1136×640 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. Bigger screen means more real estate for apps. Apple has added 5th row of icons on the home screen which is a welcome addition.
FORM-FACTOR
iPhone 5 just got bigger, thinner and lighter. At 115g and 7.6 mm it is 20% lighter and 18% thinner than the previous iPhone. For now, it’s thinnest handset in the market. The glass back is now replaced with a metal one, so you can now accidentally drop it a couple of times. The overall feel in hand is pretty good too.
CAMERA
The camera unit on the iPhone 5 is same as the iPhone 4s i.e. 8MegaPixels. It boasts of some fancy features like backside illumination, a hybrid IR filter and f2.4 aperture. There’s a panorama mode which stitch the images into a bigger 28MP one. The A6 chip on the backend improves the opening and shot taking time subtly. Apple claims it to give better low light performance and noise reduction capabilities. You can now capture photos while recording your 1080P video.Front camera too is improved. It now supports 720p video. So, iPhone 5 has got a pretty good camera units.
CONNECTOR
The new connector called lightning is 80% smaller than the previous one. Its good move but not the best one out there. Apple could have switched to the industry standard micro-USB. It is better than previous connector though. Although your older iPhone accessories like speaker docks will not be compatible with this one, but at least it will not accumulate dust like the previous one.
BATTERY
Apple claims that iPhone 5 will boast of decent battery life. Still 4G LTE is a big battery hog. Here’s what Apple claims: 8h 3G browsing, 8h 3G talktime, 8h LTE browsing, 10h WiFi browsing, 10h video playback, 40h music playback and 225h. If these claims are true, then iPhone 5 got blessed with a decently powerful battery.
PRICING
Pre-orders are going on and if you live in US, you will get your iPhone 5 on 21st September. 199$ for 16GB, 299$ for 32GB, 399$ for 64GB. It will be available in stores on 21st September in USA, UK, Australia, France, Germany, Canada, Japan, Hong-Kong and Singapore. More countries will follow in the coming month.
CONCLUSION
So the new iPhone 5 has got thinner and lighter metal body which feels good in hand. The bigger 4″ display won’t hurt either. Better Processor, better camera, batter battery life just make the decision more easier.So taking into consideration all the improved features, it is worth your hard earned bucks , more so if Apple delivers its promises on battery life and all. As the saying goes, “Bigger is better”.
Geek Corner 