Apple officially unveils the iPhone 5
By During the Apple iPhone 5 event Apple unveiled the….you guessed it iPhone 5! Below are just some of the new features! You can read the full press release here!
The iPhone 5 sports a taller screen, a new dock connector port, LTE support, and a host of other new features. Apple will start taking pre-orders on Friday, and the phone will start shipping in some countries on Sept. 21,with 28 more by September 28th and 100 countries to be added by the end of December, the iPhone 5 will start at $199.
The Screen
The biggest difference between the old iPhone 4 and the new iPhone 5 is the taller screen the display offers 326 pixels per inch, with a 4-inch screen and 1136 x 640 resolution. The taller screen means that Apple can add a fifth row of icons on the taller home screen.
Apps that aren’t updated don’t stretch or scale, instead they will simply be displayed letterboxed on the iPhone, with black borders surrounding the centered app. Furthermore since the touch sensors are integrated right into the display, it’s 30 percent thinner, with sharper imagery, and less glare in sunlight.
Ultrafast Wireless
New to the iPhone 5 is LTE, HSPA+, and DC-HSDPA support. That’s on top of the GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, and HSPA that the iPhone 4S offered. Schiller said that with LTE, the iPhone 5 can achieve a “theoretical maximum downlink of up to 100Mbps.”
A6 Processor
The processor in the iPhone 5 is the brand new Apple A6, which is twice as fast at CPU and graphics processing compared to the A5 the on in the previous iPhone 4S. Furthermore it’s 22 percent smaller than its predecessor, which means launching apps, viewing attachments, loading music—will be twice as fast as before.
The Battery
Schiller explained that Apple wanted “to match the battery life of the 4S in a thinner and lighter design” for the iPhone 5. The company ended up exceeding that battery life; the iPhone 5 will offer:
- 8 hours 3G talk/browsing
- 8 hours LTE
- 10 hours Wi-Fi
- 10 hours video
- 40 hours music
- 255 hours standby
The Camera
The new iPhone 5 includes an eight megapixel sensor, 3264 by 2448 pixel images. It’s backside illuminated, with a hybrid IR filter, five-element lens, and a fast f/2.4 aperture.
The camera also includes, for the first time on an iPhone, a sapphire lens cover, which Schiller said would protect the lens and make images cleaner and sharper.
Video performance is improved, too. The iPhone 5 offers 1080p HD video, improved video stabilization, face detection for up to ten faces, and can take photos while you’re recording video. The front-facing camera is now a FaceTime HD 720p HD camera with backside illumination, a significant improvement over the iPhone 4S’s VGA-quality front-facing camera.
Pricing:
The iPhone 5 has the same on-contract US pricing as the 4S pricing last year:
- $199 16 GB
- $299 32 GB
- $399 64 GB
