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iPhone 5 launches
- Published on Sunday, 23 September 2012 21:33
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Despite mixed reactions and resoundingly negative reviews of its new maps service, the iPhone 5’s release this week attracted Apple’s biggest queues ever for a product ever as Apple fanboys flooded stores worldwide.
The latest iPhone, the first Apple product to be launched without the guidance of Steve Jobs following his passing last year, is billed as thinner, lighter, faster, and simpler.
The first, obvious change in the new iPhone is the size. Despite Jobs not wanting to change the size of the screen, Apple has done it anyway making the new screen larger, with overall measurements of 124 x 59 x 7.6mm.
The new screen is 4-inches itself, and allows for more usable space, an extra line of apps per page, a 1,136 x 640 display, better presentation for HD content, and can now present media in 16:9.
The second big change is the weight, shedding 112 grams from its predecessor, the iPhone 4S. While the weight-loss seems negligible, many users are praising the new weight, leading satirical website The Onion to running a parody on iPhone 4S users all developing hunchbacks from the previous phones weight.
Another major change is the dock connector. For 10 years, Apple has used the 30-pin dock connector. However, this has been canned for Apple’s new dock connector; Lightning. The connector is smaller, faster, and easier to connect. However, while it was necessary for Apple to replace the 30-pin dock connector due to its age, it also means that the iPhone 5 is incompatible with the huge array of products made for iPhone and iPad on the market.
At its heart, the new iPhone is powered by the A6 processor, which Apple describes as twice as fast as its predecessor. Independent analysis has discovered this new processor is a dual-core 1.05 GHz processor paired with 1GB of RAM.
Storage-wise, the iPhone 5 has 16, 32, and 64 GB models. As before, the storage is not expandable, but iCloud does offer users additional room on Apple’s cloud storage network should they need it.
The iPhone 5 also has increased wireless connectivity, with the new LTE bring one of the biggest talking points of the new phone. Its WiFi connectivity now boasts dual-band capability, increasing users’ connection power to 5GHz.
Apple can also boast about the iPhone’s battery life. Despite being twice as fast as the iPhone 4S, the battery life has actually been extended. At its peak usage, the battery on the iPhone can last for an impressive 11 hours and 15 minutes.
Despite being better in nearly every regard, the iPhone 5 was greeted with an overwhelming wave of apathy by users and critics. The ennui quickly dissipated at its launch, with Apple noting record crowds around its stores worldwide.
The only big let-down has been Apple’s new map service. In an attempt to put distance between themselves and rival tech firm Google, Apple chose to dump Google Maps in favour of their own Apple Maps for the new iPhone.
However, the move has not been warmly greeted. Google Maps still offers a massively better user experience, while Apple Maps has been described by one user as “like a treasure map drawn by a lobotomised drunken pirate on the ass of a cow.”
