back to article Apple iPhone 5 review

Time was, smartphones did little that was actually smart. They had front-facing cameras and maybe a touchscreen, but operating systems geared more for a stylus than fingers. It wasn’t until the iPhone landed in 2007 that things changed. For the next few years Apple continued to deliver the brainiest of smartphones. No one else …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Obviously A Fanboi ...

    "Sure, there are other handsets which do as much as or more than the iPhone 5. But Apple’s ease of use, highly populated App Store and irresistibly sleek hardware design are enough to give it the edge."

    Tell us about the maps .....

    :D

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

      Maps? Turns out you're looking at it the wrong way.

      Using any map will result in some abstraction of reality, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the destination. This is a fact of life for every map. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 5, avoid looking it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the desired location in the view, or simply use one of many available paper atlases.

      1. Richard 81

        Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

        I know you've used the troll icon, but... huh?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

          "I know you've used the troll icon, but... huh?"

          And for those who gave that post a negative...

          "Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases."

          See: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/

      2. Matt_payne666

        Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

        this is true.... and having no imagery for the southeast of the uk is totally fine as its apple I suppose.... Bognor to Eastbourne upto crawley is all black no entry imagery! as is much of the rest of the country....

        1. Colin Wilson 2

          Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

          Bugger Bognor!

        2. Jediben
          Trollface

          Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

          Well nothing south of Crawley really matters anyway.

          *peers out window overlooking runway*

    2. Stuart 22
      Big Brother

      Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

      From early reports it appears the map problem is proportionate to the distance from Cupertino. So its clearly a customer fault. So let's have less of this blasphemy please ...

      1. Katie Saucey
        Happy

        Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

        One new keyboard please

      2. garbo
        Devil

        Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

        iPhone 5 don't need no stinkin' maps. Speed dial button 0 connects direct to Steve-in-Heaven, who leads the way to Nirvana. Can Samsung beat that?

    3. Mr_Bungle
      Facepalm

      Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

      Is the reviewer perhaps the hidden love child of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. Spawned in the Apple Labs. Home schooled using only SIRI and Apple products, no sense or knowledge of any other technology. The iClone LIVES!

      The worst review I've ever read -

      1. Grovelling indroduction

      2. Foaming at the gash about the appearance.

      3. Ignoring massive flaws.

      4. End.

      That had no place on this site, it was a essentially a review about what a phone case looked like. Do your readers a favour Reg, execute the simpering idiot who wrote the review, then delete any reference to him from your archives.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

      Tell us about the maps .....

      I'd like to hear more about the Youtube integration as well....................

      1. NightFox

        Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

        @AC 12:08

        Actually the YouTube integration is still there. The viewer is now a separate downloadable app, but the 'send to YouTube' functionality is still built into the OS

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

          "Actually the YouTube integration is still there. The viewer is now a separate downloadable app, but the 'send to YouTube' functionality is still built into the OS"

          I've never understood building this functionality into the OS. I'm about to do a direct Android comparison so fanboys please leave this for someone calmer to respond to.

          Android - you install an app (Facebook/Twitter) and that app says "I can share this MIME type", Android knows you can post images to FB/Twitter so shows them in the share list for images from *any other application*. The OS doesn't care what applications are installed to share stuff, it's irrelevant.

          With iOS the support to share with Twitter and now Facebook is baked into the OS and doesn't seem to be expandable. Does anyone know the reason for this?

          1. Sean Timarco Baggaley

            Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

            @AC:

            "With iOS the support to share with Twitter and now Facebook is baked into the OS and doesn't seem to be expandable."

            It is: there's an API and documentation to allow anyone to add this stuff. Nice try though.

            Re. the review: it's a bit shallow, but so are El Reg reviews for everything else.

            As for the reviewer's verdict: GUIs and user experiences are very subjective. Personally, I detest Android's UX and wouldn't touch an Android device with a 100' pole. Google's "Big Brother" freeloading business model. ("Give us all your personal data for free, so we can make a mint entirely at the expense of your privacy!") Bugger that.

            I'd rather have Apple's "Gated Community" approach, curation and all. At least you know where you stand with Apple. They don't try to pretend to be anything other than a hard-nosed purveyor of well-designed consumer electronics.

            Yes, techies and nerds hate Apple's mollycoddling, but they do have a choice: they can buy an Android device instead.

            There is room for both. Hell, there's room for Windows (Phone) 8 too. (Yes, I rather like Microsoft's effort at creating an original take on the multi-touch UI. It's a shame Android—as is so common with Linux-based OSes in general, opted for just ripping-off a commercial UI instead. FOSS may have many benefits, but genuine UX innovation clearly isn't one of them.)

            As for the maps: It's a v1.0 release! What did you all expect? You can still access Google's own Maps site, or download Google Earth if you prefer.

            Google's labelling is a real pig's ear, often barely legible, and rarely useful either. Their photo strips often have poor alignment at their edges, so roads suddenly become offset from one tile to the next. Resolution—until very, very recently—was also terrible in rural Lazio, for example. For years, a big chunk of the Province of Viterbo, particularly around the lakes, was entirely obscured by clouds at some zoom levels. So, no, Apple aren't alone in having problems satisfying everyone all of the time. Mapping the planet is the very definition of a work in progress—all such maps are in permanent beta and will never, ever be 'finished'.

            Apple's vector-based system is a vast improvement from a UX perspective however. Unlike Google's effort, I can actually read the labels and even tell the app how big I want them!

            Yes, "flyover" is a bit of a gimmick for locals, but I can see how tourists would find it useful for orienting themselves—especially in "Old World" cities like London, where the streets aren't as clear as the US' simpler grid layouts.

            1. Anonymous Coward 101

              Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

              "As for the maps: It's a v1.0 release! What did you all expect?"

              A mapping app that works at lest as well as Google Maps?

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

              @Sean Timarco Baggaley.... dear oh dear oh dear.... where do I start with your rose tinted babbleings...

              "At least you know where you stand with Apple."

              Do you really??? and you think that knowing Apple are fucking you over is a good thing? The standard apple response to finding a bug or vulnerability in a apple product is to stick their fingers in the ears saying "la la la la la ... its not real, its not real... its a feature" quietly fix it while adding a new feature and claim "we don’t have bugs" then update the OS rendering current software useless, the response from apple is "Buy new software"

              "As for the maps: It's a v1.0 release! What did you all expect?"

              I would expect for anyone replacing a feature of a product that is vastly used all over the world wold replace that feature with one that’s as equally good. Imagine Microsoft pulling all versions of MS office off the shelf and replacing it with a product with all the functionality of word-perfect 5, and telling everyone that we will fix it over the next 5 years so it will be as good as what you had it before.... By the time apple fix the maps to be as good as google maps are now, Imagine where google maps will be then!!! Apple Will have to spend stupid amounts of money to get close to google within 2 years... Meanwhile, I would imagine a lot of apple iphone customers who use the mapping services on a regular basis will wean themselves off apple by replacing the phone with a ipod touch and get themselves a android handset.... for the rest of the iphone populous, they will be happy with their iphones that start fart apps a little faster....

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

              "It is: there's an API and documentation to allow anyone to add this stuff. Nice try though."

              Thanks Sean but you haven't really answered anything. If it's as it reads, then why do Facebook/Twitter need Apple to include "Facebook integration" and why can't they just use this API to add it?

              I presume by that the API you're talking about is an API to allow any application to use Twitter/Facebook functionality and that API is provided by Apple as part of iOS? Otherwise, why is Facebook integration declared as a feature of iOS 6? - that is what I'm trying to understand.

            4. Naughtyhorse
              Facepalm

              Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

              "Give us all your personal data for free, so we can make a mint entirely at the expense of your privacy!"

              as opposed to apples; give us all your money, so we can have all your money, we'll then secretly steal all your data and make even more money flogging that off to all and sundry.

              yeah i can see the distinction

    5. Dare to Think

      Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

      How can this phone get 90%???

      The faster chip doesn't matter - hard transaction times do. Faster chips only gloss over bloatware or badly written code. Where is the comparison to other smartphones as ElReg does it with laptops?

      There is still no OLED screen, a small screen in comparison to Samsung Galaxy and Nokia Luminas, no NFC and no expandable storage.

      Still no Xenon flash, no camera oversampling, no lossless zoom.

      The Retina display has become obsolete: Samsung Galaxy S III or the Nokia Lumia 920 have higher resolutions and larger screens than in the iPhone5

      4G LTE is not a unique selling point, everyone else has it, too.

      And the paying starts again: first for the phone itself, then for the overpriced 24or 36 month contract, £25 for the adaptor, apps, you name it.

      1. Spanners Silver badge
        Meh

        How?

        The top Apple device is now better than a galaxy GS2. How is that not worth an uninformative grovel?

        OK , it is not faster than the GS3 by a considerable margin, or better looking, more functional, easier to user etc but that can only mean that they have copied something that Apple hasn't invented yet...

    6. Ben79
      Joke

      Re: Obviously A Fanboi ...

      http://i.imgur.com/o44nv.jpg

      :)

    7. mrunix
      Coat

      Re: Obviously A Fanboi ... for sure...... lesser specs than galaxy nexus, and still fantastic ?

      This is not a review.

      it is a apple lover giving testimony to his faith. fine with me, but do that in the comments,

      and let someone less biased review this piece of technology.

      mrunix

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    better

    Get in quick before the LTE lawsuit that has been promised...

    1. stuff and nonesense

      Re: better

      I was under the impression that LTE is FRAND. Patent holders will have to allow use of their patents for the appropriate non-discriminatory fee.

      1. DryBones

        Re: better

        Never in doubt that it is FRAND. However, the point of contention is on whether Apple needs to pay, or their chippery supplier already did. So basically it's yet another game of legal footsie.

  3. nigel 15
    FAIL

    Get a Room

    startlingly different from any other handset and its slimness, lightness and smooth matte aluminium back continue to take the breath away. - come on.

    when you've 'finished' perhaps you could had the phone over to someone who can write a proper review. you'd think apple had invented 16:9. They probably think they did.

    one of the worst articles i have read on the reg.

    1. Jon Double Nice

      Re: Get a Room

      Apple patent:

      16:9 on a phone

    2. Koyaanisq

      Re: Get a Room

      ZTE Athena is 6.2mm.

      And as far as I know, Steve Jobs hated 16:9.

      Thanks, Google!

      1. Jediben
        Devil

        Re: Get a Room

        Hmm.

        Job 16:9 - "God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me; my opponent fastens on me his piercing eyes."

        And covets my rounded corners?

      2. Goat Jam

        Re: Get a Room

        "And as far as I know, Steve Jobs hated 16:9."

        Yep, I think we are seeing proof that Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs and are witnessing the decline of apple.

        Sure the core fanboi's will still be there, even as they were in apples darkest days in the 90's but slowly but surely I think we will see that the non-rabid purchasers of apple products will start to move on to other brands.

        I sort of fell into owning an iphone 4, and for the most part it has been a good phone, much better than the Moto Razr v3 I had before it but the 4S and now the 5 have convinced me that there is no future in the iphone and my next phone will not be made by apple.

        1. Dave 126

          Not just Stephen Fry...

          ... Douglas Adams of H2G2 fame, and friend of Mr Fry, was also a massive Apple fan.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams#Technology_and_innovation

          Okay, that's citing Wikipedia, but his dead-tree book The Salmon of Doubt gives the same impression, being as it is a collection of past essays and documents trawled from his hard-disk.

          Mr Fry gets the mickey taken around here, DNA (in Cambridge before Crick and Watson) is held in more esteem. Just saying.

    3. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Get a Room

      So a review you don't agree with is a bad review? Well then go and find one which tells you what you already decided without ever having used the damn thing.

      I did guess it would be 90% before opening though.

      1. Richard 81

        Re: Get a Room

        So a review you don't agree with is a bad review? There's possibly an element of that, but this particular article is so gushy you'd be excused for thinking it was written by Stephen Fry.

        1. Aaron Em

          No reason so to insult a Reg hack, unless it's that Dabbs

          The article contains no face-smackingly egregious errors of fact -- which would not be true had it proceeded from the pen of Stephen Fry, who is a deeply hilarious comedian, but who did after all once say, with a straight face, that the Saturn V rocket worked on the principle of aerodynamic lift.

          1. nigel 15

            Re: No reason so to insult a Reg hack, unless it's that Dabbs

            The pricing is wrong. it's only 1 digit out mind. like 'Duncaster'

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: No reason so to insult a Reg hack, unless it's that Dabbs

            You might have heard of something called 'being economical with the truth', i.e. missing things out because they don't happen to fit with your point of view. I know this is Elreg, where different rules apply, but this review was appalling.

    4. Dan 55 Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Get a Room

      Try the video review instead...

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdIWKytq_q4

      1. Miek
        Trollface

        Re: Get a Room

        Kinda reminds me of :

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVz4VweMqFE

    5. Katie Saucey
      Thumb Up

      Re: Get a Room

      alas ...unfortunately I can only up-vote you post once

  4. Miek
    Linux

    That's a nice Samsung Galaxy S2, oh, it's the new iPhone you say? Now who is slavishly copying another competitor's design ?

    Basically the iPhone 5 competes with the Samsung Galaxy S2, not the latest S3 and it costs a hell of a lot on contract. If you are paying £36 quid a month, you should expect a phone of that specification for free with the contract not at an additional cost. Those who are rushing out to buy this product are idiots, this is not because I don't like Apple or anything, it is simply that it is an inferior product.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Miek: "That's a nice Samsung Galaxy S2, oh, it's the new iPhone you say?"

      The principle criticism aimed at the outward appearance of the iPhone 5 is that it hasn't moved on sufficiently from the iPhone 4. And then we have this assertion that is looks like a Samsung Galaxy S2. The possible conclusions that could be drawn by combining these observations are:

      1) Apple have a time machine and were able to see the Samsung Galaxy S2 when they designed the iPhone 4

      2) Samsung knocked of the iPhone 4 design

      I suppose if you're inclined to believe the whole "Apple hypnotised the world with SJs RDF", I guess the time machine theory might seem plausible too. Most other people can see the obvious fact that Samsung has never come up with anything revolutionary in its entire history, and most of its products are simply derivative.

      1. Miek
        Linux

        "1) Apple have a time machine and were able to see the Samsung Galaxy S2 when they designed the iPhone 4" -- They must have examined the Samsung Tocco and Tocco Lite.

        "2) Samsung knocked of the iPhone 4 design" -- Apple knocked off the Nokia N810 design.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @Miek: "That's a nice Samsung Galaxy S2, oh, it's the new iPhone" / "Apple knocked off the Nokia N810 design"

          Let us know when you've decided which phone Apple is ripping off...

          ...or does it keep changing every time someone points out the obvious inconsistencies in the previous accusation?

          1. Miek
            Trollface

            "or does it keep changing every time someone points out the obvious inconsistencies in the previous accusation" - No one has pointed out any "obvious" inconsistencies in my "accusations", feel free to try.

  5. GreggS

    And the call quality/signal?

    Has that improved?

    1. nigel 15

      Re: And the call quality/signal?

      you don't understand. just look at it. not in photos. they are unable to replicate it's beauty. in the flesh.

      asking about the call quality and signal from a phone review on a technical news site is just trolling.

      if you could spend a week with cheryl cole you wouldn't ask about her cooking. neither should you enquire about the call and signal quality, mapping, price, multitasking of an iPhone.

      1. Richard 81

        Re: And the call quality/signal?

        I'd have at least a passing interest in her... features though, and not just for looking at either.

      2. GreggS

        Re: And the call quality/signal?

        The difference is I'd kick Cheryl Cole out in the morning, but having spent/wasted £500 on an iPhone5, I'd be stuck with it until the iPhone5s/6 comes out. Besides, Cheryl's mum does all the cooking.

        1. wowfood
          Trollface

          Re: And the call quality/signal?

          Difference between an iPhone5 and a hooker?

          The hooker is cheaper and the people paying expect to be screwed.

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