iPhone 5: skinny li'l fella with better display, camera, software
Rumor has it that an Eritrean goat-herder with the unlikely name of "Bob" was unaware of the fact that Apple would unveil its iPhone 5 on Wednesday. Frankly, we find that hard to believe. In all of recorded gadget history, few product announcements have had as much pre-event hype as did today's iPhone 5 roll-out at an event in …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Re: Evolutionary
"Ah yes the usual "not very exciting changes" post: well just LTE support while keeping the same battery life, larger screen, thinner, lighter and in a now mostly metal body.... oh and a better camera too finally with a good front camera for videochat."
All of those features have been available on other phones for a couple of years now - that's why they aren't exciting changes.
Re: Evolutionary
Life outside the Apple eco-system.....our you mad?
The world is flat you do know that right?
Comment 5
It's got up to three more words than last year's Comment 4S.
That's all?
I am trying to decide if this is a bigger bump up from 4S or if the 4S was a bigger bump from the 4. I thought apple would have brought something to trump the competition, not something actually less. I love the apple products, but this is yet another minor bump in updates over the 4S, the biggest probably being having 4G, but in the US (and elsewhere?) with ridiculous 2GB limits on data use per month, you can't even really enjoy 4G for anything but emails and minor picture posts.
We'll have to wait a few hours or maybe even days until we see comparisons with images from the camera compared to the S3 or HTC One X or other android phones, but I don't suspect it will be that much better in any scenario.
As for performance, the new cpu is comparable, if not a bit less than the US S3/HTC capabilities, and not nearly as good as the quad-cores out there. The design is still the same too.. same dated design as before.. little slimmer and lighter, big deal. Add a case to protect all that glass it has and it's the same thickness as any other phone with a case. I don't understand all this need to make the phone thinner and thinner. If anything that worries me the tech inside has less room to stay cool and may present problems later on.
Siri.. meh.. big deal. Their own mapping solution.. well they got more money than God so why not spend a little on doing your own solution to cut your competitors product from your phone.
No doubt the apple fans will be out in droves to keep up their zombie appearances over a new apple product just to say they got it. It will be curious to see if they can sell 20 million in a week like Samsung did for the S3.
I sure hope HTC's lawsuit holds up and bans the iPhone 5 from US for a while.. fair is fair. But being a US company (even though 95% of their employees/work is done outside of US..way to go Apple) it will probably not get the same instant-ban that Samsung got for their devices.. which obviously points out how unfair and badly broken the system is.
Re: That's all?
and you know the performance of this phone's CPU how?
Oh you're guessing, just like all the other bs in your comment.
Re: That's all?
>I don't understand all this need to make the phone thinner and thinner. If anything that worries me the tech inside has less room to stay cool and may present problems later on.
A thinner phone will allow a case to afford greater protection for the same size in the pocket, if it is durability that concerns you. Air only cools components if it moving over them- it is a poor conductor- so devices like this tend to sink heat to their cases.
Silicone, as used in phone cases (and kitchen ware), is also a poor conductor- I would imagine that cases don't do battery lifetime any good, if the CPU causes the battery temperature to rise.
Re: That's all?
We can put it in a class of performance. As the A6 is based on the ARM Cortex A15 architecture, and the Qualcomm S4, Krait processors are very similar to Cortex A15, we can say that they're quite comparable..
That said, Apple are known to tweak the CPU architecture.
Re: That's all?
How long do you think it will take the tech people to compare performance when a new phone its the street... especially in 2012? My S3 had graphs up showing how fast it was before it was released. The cpus are built and tested long before they make it to market, and since there is no other competing ios/hardware to compare the same app on, comparing the same game or program on an android vs apple is not going to work either. The only thing that works is the same set of hardware benchmarks, like some that have already surfaced showing the differences in performance. Look around, if you read the reg and can figure out how to respond.. I am sure you'll put on your big boy britches and dig up an article or two that talk about the internals of the cpus, their performance, etc.
Re: That's all?
"and you know the performance of this phone's CPU how?"
The CPU performance is perhaps your only stab at making this aged and bland product relevant.
All the hype, the endless wittering of Apple users, months upon months of it. And the result of all of this is?
You get one extra line of icons.
Re: That's all?
Add a case to protect all that glass it has and it's the same thickness as any other phone with a case
You do realise the case is all metal now don't you? No of course you don't you are just a typical Fandroid slating Apple because you think it makes you superior when it's clear from your comment that you haven't even looked at the phone properly.
It's not enough to make me consider upgrading my 4S, but to make a lighter thinner phone that is twice as fast as their current offering is quite an achievement
Re: That's all?
"You do realise the case is all metal now don't you?"
They got transparent aluminium for the screen?!!
Take that those who say that Apple doesn't innovate
get yar facts straight first...
20 mill S3 in 100 days....bit of a difference between 7 days and 100 days....or maybe you were making a joke?
http://www.zdnet.com/samsung-galaxy-s-iii-sales-hit-20-million-in-100-days-7000003819/
Re: That's all?
They got transparent aluminium for the screen?!!
I said the case. Yet another Fandroid with the attention span of a goldfish. The original argument was because of 'all the glass' you'd need a cover for the phone which counters the fact that it's thinner as the cover would make it thicker again.
Obviously the screen is made of glass, but the casing isn't. How can you make an argument that you need a case just because of the screen?! If that's true then all Android phones also need a case as they all have glass screens, so lets get the pitchforks ready for when the S4 comes out and it's thinner, so therefore must require a cover judging by the anti apple logic of some on here
Comment 5S
It's got slightly clearer text and I posted it 12% faster.
Not terribly exciting
The hardware engineering that's gone into is good but the rest of what's on offer is starting to look a little staid and that camera is looking very evolutionary. Since mobile snapping is popular, I see an opening for Nokia to leverage its imaging tech (if M$ can deliver the goods with WinPho 8).
Re: Not terribly exciting
"The hardware engineering that's gone into is good"
By that, do you mean it works in both hands?
Re: Not terribly exciting
"By that, do you mean it works in both hands?"
Better than my Samsung S3 for working with one hand and the those millimetres don't shave easily! However, in the name of a bigger screen, that's an aspect of the S3 I grudgingly live with (Apple tends to forget that we the people will from time to time grudgingly live with something in the name of something else IMHO).
and now all they need to do
is fix the email system so it can actually be used.
Couldn't really choose a worse day to screw up
Hardly surprizing...
They'll be suing Samsung for having a 4+ inch screen next week and copying them
Re: Hardly surprising...
Just a reminder... that HTC was doing big screen phones of this type, with all of the functionality mentioned ('Global phone' etc - even push email, remote sync and copy and paste!), before iPhone or Android was even released.
Manufacturing processes have improved to make phone hardware sufficiently smaller, but nothing in the iPhone series is groundbreaking apart from marketing penetration, which Apple achieves by using media outlets as a willing, self-lubricating strap-on.
Puerile
Backside illumination. Come back Finbarr, all is forgiven.
Baaaaaaaa
Here in Denmark they did an iPhone 5 related survey in which respondents said they didn't care what the upgrades were, they would upgrade to it anyway.
Re: Baaaaaaaa
Could I get the source for that?
I wish to fling at a few of my friends!
So with the release of the iPhone 5 Apple are finally admitting that the glass back idea was stupid, the screen was always too small and a proper 16:9 aspect ratio is better.
I think that, at best, they stuck with the old screen size for too long. It was in the top tier back in 2007 so 'always' is stretching things a little. Making more of the surface area glass than just the front always seemed a bit stupid though — if I accidentally apply excessive force to my device I'd much rather have a dent at the point of impact than a shatter across the entire face. As for the 3:2 aspect ratio? It's the same as 35mm film and closer to the golden rectangle than 16:9 but I guess moving to the industry standard buys some advantages, and surely many more people are watching movies than looking at digitised 35mm images.
And the obvious point to come out of that comparison table is that the iPhone5 is smaller (especially thinner) and lighter than the competition. That alone will sell it to many. It is, after all, a phone that people like to carry around in their pocket. I think what the fanboys (in both camps) are missing is that these products are used by a wide range of non-techie people who look beyond the endless acronyms and specifications and focus on usability.
aspect ratio
I would hardly call 16:9 a proper aspect ratio. Sure, it's the ratio for most TV and home-movie content, but that's hardly relevant unless you're using your iPhone mainly for watching TV and movies. And if you are, I would assume you are a small child who has been given a parent's iPhone to watch Shrek in the back seat during a long car ride, not an adult who can afford an actual television.
"So with the release of the iPhone 5 Apple are finally admitting that the glass back idea was stupid, the screen was always too small and a proper 16:9 aspect ratio is better."
In which case, expect the next iPad to also feature a more sensible aspect ratio - after which, there will be a reduced need to doctor photographs for use as evidence.
Re: aspect ratio
Almost every screen in your life is now 16:9, with the odd 16:10 thrown in to confuse things, and of course there are the ipads and previous iPhones that are not. But TVs, laptops, non-Apple tablets, desktop monitors and now most phones are all a widescreen format. When you develop an application for a new device changes in the aspect ratio is more of a problem than changes in the resolution. Changes in resolution may just require some resizing of images and UI components, aspect ratio can require redesigning the UI.
"No 'very exciting' changes", "a little staid"
I'm not sure what you guys were expecting to happen. Smartphones are pretty much 'a touchscreen plus the bits you need to get it working that you don't really want to see'. I mean, were you expecting chromed exhausts? Integral cheese graters? A liquid metal phone you have to keep in a bottle? 8 core processors with visible water cooling?
They changed the screen in the only ways a screen can be changed (resolution and aspect ratio). They redesigned the rest of it. They fiddled with the insides. They could have gone to a curved back but given they had one to start with before they went square, would that actually be 'new'?
Seriously, what kind of things would you have liked them to have done?
Personally I would like them to start giving them absurd features, getting more and more ridiculous with every release just to see how many people would keep buying them.
what would I like them to have done ?
Surprise me. That's all.
They have been quite good at that in the past.
What I'd have liked
is a really thin phone, with a front that's 100% screen. No bezel at all, and no visible earpiece, microphone, home button or camera. Apple can use their 'Innovativeness' to figure out how to do all this but haptic or piezo technology should work for the speakers, they've already invented cameras that can look through LCD screens and the microphone should be child's play.
Give us a phone that's literally all screen, and we'll all be walking around feeling like extras from Star Trek as opposed to now where I followed the entire live blog expecting to be blown away, and ended up with a bit of a 'meh' moment. Closest to this at the moment is the Galaxy Note, but even that's a bit bezel-heavy and it's ginormous.
I have an iPhone 4, I saw no reason to upgrade to the 4S and unfortunately see no reason to upgrade to the 5 either. Shame as I was looking forward to this.
ooooooooooooooooooooo!
Steampunk smartphone with visible liquid cooling for those 8 core processors!
That would be pretty bitchen...
;)
What would I have liked?
uSD card slot, 'admin' logon with sudo rights, higher res display, removable battery twice the size, USB host port, SSH server.
THAT, I would pay money for.
Re: What would I have liked?
"uSD card slot, 'admin' logon with sudo rights, higher res display, removable battery twice the size, USB host port, SSH server."
SSH capability, e.g. a SSH capable shell - useful (albeit not to most people). But an SSH server? What are you planning to do with your phone?
Re: What would I have liked?
"But an SSH server? What are you planning to do with your phone?"
sshfs?
Re: What would I have liked?
I've *got* root login and an ssh server on my iPhone, as well as a BSD user environment.
Higher res display would be a bit pointless as you already can't see the dots - it'd just suck more battery for no reason.
If I was Samsung, I'd be extremely fscked off. The new iPhone is a blatant copy of the Samsung SII.
...but as that's a copy of the iPhone (in the US at least) doesn't that mean that the iPhone 5 is an evolution of the iPhalaxyS...nngg...logic loop.
*collapses*
Us techies forget the importance of form over features, but my aesthete wife, who loved the early Apple stuff, reminds me that the iPhone 4 and 4S are ugly. Sadly for Apple, she reckons iPhone 5 looks even worse and nowhere near as good as the S3. If that is true, a lot of Apple's female or metrosexual fan base is going to be very disappointed - the kind of people who don't care about all the technical, megapixel this, processor that, improvements that this keynote had too much of, imho.
Headline
Apple new iPhone almost as good as it's copies.
Re: Headline
No, the headline should be "Android fanboys so insecure that all they do is spout bile about the iPhone".
Re: Headline
Exactly - they're now just another Android wannabe.
Re: Headline
"No, the headline should be "Android fanboys so insecure that all they do is spout bile about the iPhone".
Err the iphone 5 has less features than its Android competition, no reason for a Galaxy S 3 owner to be insecure.
You're the one sounding insecure with schoolyard name-calling...
Re: Headline
The legal venom spat at Samsung now just looks like good old jealousy.
This topic is closed for new posts.
