REVIEW ON IPHONE 5

The iPhone is closer than ever to disappearing. No, not in a dinosaur kind of way, not even in a Sue Storm kind of way.

Certainly, the iPhone is in high demand and nowhere near being in danger of losing its popularity. And, at least as of this point, Apple hasn’t figured out how to make it completely transparent. But what it has been working to do—on a number of levels—is to create devices that do everything they can to fade from your attention when you start to use them, like a gadget Jedi mind trick.

Apple has been making small but important decisions here and there since the original iPhone to ensure that as little as possible comes between you and whatever you happen to be interacting with on the screen.

For:-

• Great Design
• Larger Screen
• Quality Camera

AGAINST:-

• High Price
• Poor Maps
• Ageing Os

DESIGN:-

How the thing actually feels in the hand. With the iPhone 5 there will be many types of prospective buyer: the upgrader from the 4 (or more-money-than-sense iPhone 4S upgraders), those tired of their Android handset and those taking their first steps in the smartphone market and want to get one of them  iThingies their friend/child has.

You'll obviously see the change in height too – the iPhone 5 stands 123.8mm tall to allow for the larger 4-inch screen. In truth, those not familiar with the iPhone 4S probably wouldn't notice the difference, which is why it's a good move from Apple to include the larger screen if it's not going put people off that hate larger phones

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The decision to stick at 4-inches is Apple's admission that while it recognises people are all over the idea of having more screen real estate to play with it doesn't want to move away from the thumb-friendly nature of the device.

Through a mixture of moving the centre of gravity slightly as well as repositioning the screen within the bezel, it's still possible to scroll your thumb mostly around the whole display one-handed, which Apple is clearly keen to keep hold of.

However, I'm not convinced of that argument any more, and the power button was still a little out of reach when using the phone normally, as was anything in the top left-hand corner of the screen. 

This was no issue in reality, as scooting the phone down a touch in the palm is a natural action. But if that's the case, then why not offer a 4.3-inch screen at least? There's more to a phone than a screen these days (although increasingly less and less) and the general construction of the iPhone 5 is excellent to say the least.

I've seen both the ceramic white version and the anodised black, and the two tone effect on the back of the phone is stunning, both visually and under the finger.

It doesn't beat the sheer beauty of the HTC One S, with its micro-arc oxidised back and rounded lines, but it's well-set in second place.

The two sections of pigmented glass at the top and the bottom of the phone add a pleasant effect, and the sapphire glass is meant to be thoroughly durable, to complement the Gorilla Glass on the front.

Apple knows consumers get furious when they drop and iPhone, and is clearly seeking to stop the smashes before they happen with a tougher exterior - although it seems the anodised black version is pretty prone to scratching, with a number of users mentioning chipping on the darker hue.

But enough about what the phone looks like - the killer question is how the thing feels in hand. And I'll sum it up by saying: smooth. It's a little slippery, and I was always worried I would drop the darned thing.

But that's the only negative thing about the design (apart from the low weight initially and scratching aluminium) as it sits in the palm nicely and allows you to do it all with one hand, including hitting the top-mounted power/lock button with ease.

That lock button is actually still loose, as it was on the iPhone 4S, meaning when you shake the phone around you can hear it clicking away, which undoes a lot of the premium feel Apple is going for.

Make no mistake, the iPhone 5 is one of the most beautifully crafted phones out there - but when you're paying £529 ($199) up front for the thing, I'd hope this would be the very minimum Apple would be doing.

DISPLAY:-

When Apple laminated the touch sensor to the front glass with the iPhone 4, It was hard to think that they could bring the images on the screen any closer to looking like you were directly touching them. They blew that feeling of ‘closeness’ away with the iPhone 5 by integrating the touch sensors and the display panel and then laminating that unified panel to the front glass.

This results in a reduced feeling of ‘gap’ between the glass and panel. When I say reduced, I actually mean pretty much nonexistent. If you turn the iPhone on edge and look at were the gap between glass and panel should be, you can still see a sliver of black, but it’s incredibly tiny. By comparison, the small gap in the iPhone 4S’ display array looks like a canyon, it’s pretty impressive.

This heightens the feeling that you’re manipulating the things that you see on the screen directly, rather than having your touch transmitted through the glass. It’s as close as it can get to holographic projection without it actually jumping out of the screen.

In addition to giving benefits in thickness, this screen is also a combination of manufacturing processes, which means that — in the long run — it will be cheaper and more efficient to make than the older crop of Retina displays.

The color quality is also off the charts. From the first moment you see it you know that this screen is displaying deeper blacks, more accurate colors and more vibrant than ever before. I've had the opportunity to look at a massive amount of LCD displays as a reviewer of gadgets.  I've never seen a display this impressive in any device — much less a couple hundred dollar phone.

And the all-important bright-light visibility is great on the iPhone 5 as well. When shooting images to test out the improvements in camera, I had both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 at maximum brightness and the 5 clearly outshone (heh) the older display. This should make it easier to use the still very shiny glass screen of the new device in direct sunlight. A lot of this is due to the fact that the iPhone 5 reflects 52% less ambient light than the iPhone 4S due to better coating.

The size of the screen was a worry for me from the first moments that I began hearing rumors about an increase. The 3.5“ screen of the previous iPhone models was far smaller than a lot of Android phones, like the 4.3” Galaxy Nexus or 4.6″ Samsung Galaxy S III, but it made up for it in relative quality and easy one-handed operation. I have a Galaxy Nexus and I constantly make subtle shifts in grip while using it. A slide downwards to reach a button at the top of the screen, a finger crawl to the top to reach a top button and so on. It’s not a lot, but it’s noticeable to a person used to the iPhone’s solid one-handed performance.

Increasing the size of the screen vertically by 176 pixels has done little to change the way I use or hold the iPhone 5. For the first couple of days I found myself anticipating the need to reach to the top corners of the screen and adjusting my grip to do so. But after ten days or so with it, I no longer shift my beloved ‘pinkie on the bottom’ grip, and I’m able to reach all corners of the screen. It does require more stretching than it used to, but not uncomfortably so. If you try out an iPhone 5 in a store or handle a friends and feel uncomfortable, I’d encourage you to spend a week or so with one before you make the final call, because you get used to it faster than you’d think

CONNECTOR:-

The iPhone 5’s new Lightning connector is a smaller and more clever solution to its decade old 30-pin Dock Cable connector. Introduced with the third generation of iPod, the Dock Connector was intended as a way to offer additional connectivity to third-party devices and, yes, to lock up that ecosystem so that Apple could control the ways that the connector was being used. Lets not kid ourselves that Apple’s motives were completely altruistic when coming up with its original connector or the new Lightning connector.

However, Apple has a proven track record (at least in recent years, though generally always) of not making decisions to lock users down to a certain standard without some tangible benefits. They may make choices that benefit themselves, but they’re never without tradeoffs that also benefit the user. Only the blindly anti-Apple would argue otherwise.

The new connector is radically smaller, with rock-solid construction that even experts are finding tough to disassemble for analysis.

In the case of the Lightning connector, there are some clear advantages over generic connectors like Micro USB. For one, the Lightning connector is reversible, allowing you to forget about trying to align it right before you insert it. Add up those missed seconds over the years and they’re gifting you minutes of confused fumbling back. This is facilitated by the inward bevel of the connection port, which guides it into place when you stab it.

The Micro USB standard also would not allow for full-speed charging of the iPad, which pulls more current than the USB 2 versions of that standard allow. Since the Lightning connector is doubtless coming to the next version of the iPad, they had to think ahead. If Apple wanted to go with a USB 3 compatible controller then there would have been bulky addi`tional chips necessary, increasing the internal volume of the device and likely its thickness.

Those are the tradeoffs that Apple decided to make in order to provide a majority of the connectivity offered by the old 30-pin connector along with a path to the future.

Does it suck that people are going to have to buy one or two extra cables, or adapters that are kind of pricey because they have electronics embedded in them? Yes, absolutely. Is But there was a point when the original iPods switched from Firewire to 30-pin that people had to do that as well. And one connector change in 9 years isn’t too shabby.

And aside from those technical advantages, there’s always the ergonomic bonus that the new dock connector provides.

CAMERA:-

The iPhone 5 camera might not look materially different to that found on the iPhone 4S, and in truth it is very similar.

But then again, when you're winning plaudits across the board for your smartphone photography, stepping things up in terms of specs isn't really a priority for Apple.

Just because the specs are the same, doesn't mean there aren't new features. The two biggest differences are the fact the iPhone 5 can take photos 40% faster than its predecessor and the new dynamic low-light mode reduces the pixel count but improves darker images dramatically.

I shot some video and still image comparisons, but most of them turned out so very similar that I’m not bothering to include them here. You can see from the ones that I have that there’s nothing to complain about with regards to image quality. The iPhone 5 is on the left and all of the images in this section, you’ll notice a slight increase in sharpness at times, but that’s likely software improvement.

Simply put, the iPhone 5 can capture an image in situations where you wouldn't have even bothered to pull your iPhone 4S out of your pocket. The iPhone 5 retains the fixed f 2.4 aperture of the iPhone 4S, which — due to the compressed distance between the objective and sensor — is roughly equivalent to f/18 on a 35mm camera. This means that you still get the massive depth of field compression that you’d get from a much smaller aperture. Unless you’re very close to a subject, both the foreground and background will remain very, very close in focus sharpness.

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The sapphire lens cover, which has absolutely nothing to do with the purple flaring above, should provide better scratch protection than the glass in the iPhone 4S, though I had no problems with that to begin with.

Overall, it’s a nice improvement to an already great camera, and the low light utility means that you’ll take it out and use it in more situations than ever.

The front-facing camera’s improved resolution means that you’ll end up with crisper conversations over FaceTime, but the network management of the protocol means that you’ll rarely see that resolution top out. It is nice for local self portraits though.

PERFORMANCE:-

The iPhone 5 is quick. It’s kind of difficult to quantify just how fast as there are so many hardware-accelerated elements to iOS that you don’t see a raw performance boost reflected in many day-to-day activities. But a general feeling of quickness is pervasive throughout the phone, even when comparing it to a freshly wiped iPhone 4S. With both devices at a ‘day 1’ state, the iPhone 5 loads and plays videos quicker, renders iOS 6’ vector maps quicker and generally feels…wait for it…snapping turtleier.

Needless to say, the iPhone 5 stomps the iPhone 4S . A lot of that has to do with the custom-built CPU. Apple’s A6 processor doesn't just feature a bespoke design, which was the case with all of the previous A-series processors as well. It also features custom cores designed by Apple’s own chip team, likely made up of folks acquired along with P.A. Semi in 2008 and Intrinsity in 2010. A Chip works examination of the A6 reveals that uses a 32nm HKMG process that results in very low power consumption, and that its cores were laid out by hand, a time consuming and expensive process that speaks to Apple’s commitment to eking out every last bit of performance and power conservation it can from its chips. In many ways, this is the first fully custom CPU Apple has included in its iPhones.

And the battery life suffers nearly no hit from this increase in performance. In my testing, it hit nearly identical life under normal usage (about 3/4 WiFi and 1/4 LTE with some gaming and email but mostly Twitter browsing). The fact that Apple was able to only increase the battery by around 1% in capacity, yet still manage to eke out roughly the same battery life just speaks volumes to the care it took in balancing the battery consumption of the components inside, including the hand-crafted CPU and bleeding edge Qualcomm radio chips.

VERDICT:-

This device is a tour de-force performance of a company firing on all cylinders. The internal components work together in concert to deliver one of the most pleasant and powerful experiences of any ever produced. If you’re reading these sentences and rolling your eyes, then you probably have an allergy to hyperbole, and I understand because I do too. But this isn’t hyperbole, it isn’t exaggeration.

Apple actually managed to create a phone that’s so good it has become an archetype. And when things become archetypes, they become intrinsically less interesting to people who thrive on dissonance and disruption. That’s why the iPhone 5 got such a converse reaction from the tech press when it was revealed. It’s an exercise in precision and restraint, not a play for our wildest imaginations.

When Apple’s Jony Ive says that they “take changing the iPhone very seriously”, it doesn’t mean that they’re averse to changing it at all, it just means that they’re only going to change the parts that would make it work better. The radical re-imagining stages of the way that the iPhone looks are over, but the process goes on at magma-hot levels inside, and there’s a ways left to go.

The next iPhone isn’t going to be boring, it’s going to be more exciting than ever. You’re just going to have to look inside to see it.

COURESY:- AARUSH