;)
iPhone 5 review
Love
- Bigger screen
- 4G capability
- Better front-facing camera
Hate
- No iP5-specific iOS 6 features
- Battery life still not great
- Prefer the old Maps design
iPhone 5: Screen
So, onto the screen; it’s still lovely and Retina; it now boasts 326ppi and a resolution of 1136x640; it’s equally as bright and slightly richer in colour. There’s space for a whole extra row of apps – woop! – and tasks can still be performed with one hand.
The main benefit is that you can just see more. Web pages are longer, movies are wider, though many we found from iTunes and YouTube still have to be stretched or cropped to fill the screen, the photo viewing area is bigger (just) and Apple’s own, optimised apps make good use of the extra space.
Non-optimised apps are letterboxed, which doesn’t feel right. Hopefully we’ll see a raft of updates soon. Both iTunes and the App Store have also had visual upgrades and look clean when you’re browsing, searching and splurging micropayments.
If you’re a long-time iPhone owner, you might find the elongation strange at first but you’ll soon wonder how you coped before, as going back to a 4S feels like watching your old portable bedroom TV. However, if you’ve had an extensive play with the Samsung S3, HTC One X or Nokia Lumia 900, you still might find it too titchy – it’s noticeably smaller, and that could be a sticking point for potential buyers.
So why didn’t Apple just make the screen even bigger? One theory in this reviewer’s mind is the impact of another device screen size before Christmas. If the iPad Mini was to launch, then it’d need to sit in a gap between the 9.7-inch iPad and 4-inch iPhone 5. Launching a phone with a huge 5-inch-plus screen could tread on the toes of what might be around the corner. Just a thought…
iPhone 5: Performance
Everything feels slightly slicker when navigating the phone. Apps appear to load quicker, video feels a touch smoother, video and image processing is definitely faster.
With the improved A6 processor now powering the visuals, our finger points straight at it, but it’s with new apps that we’ll really see the power of the chip take hold. Real Racing 3 (or any other A6-optimised game) wasn’t available when penning this review, so we’ll have to wait for developers to do their thing before witnessing any major power increase.
iPhone 5: Camera
The rear iSight camera remains impressive, taking great pictures in bright conditions. There’s a bigger virtual camera capture button and video stabilisation seems to have improved.
It now detects faces and auto-focuses in video and allows you to capture stills while taking video. The video-compression algorithm has also improved, reducing the file-size of footage without any discernible reduction in quality, and making for friendlier email attachments.
Low-light image capture improvement was also discussed in the Keynote but we still experienced a fair bit of grain in our testing. The major improvement is with the front camera, which has been upgraded to 720p video, making FaceTime and Skype chats much clearer. Still shots are captured at 1.2MP, so not exactly archive-worthy.
The new Panorama mode is intuitive and produces great results. It doesn’t capture in landscape orientation, which feels counter-intuitive, but the speed at which it processes and pops out a pretty, panoramic shot is impressive.
Though, even with the wider screen, you still have to zoom right in to see what you’ve captured. And while competing phones have had this feature for a while, if anything’s going to be the new Instagram over the coming months, this is it.
iPhone 5: iOS 6
The iPhone 5 comes with iOS 6 as standard. But, at this point it’s difficult to see where the unique differences are between it running on an iPhone 4S and iPhone 5. You can read our in-depth iOS 6 review but everything we’ve seen works on both.
Flyover, turn-by-turn navigation, Passbook, PhotoStream sharing, FaceTime over cellular, VIP Mailboxes, Facebook integration, Do Not Disturb, improved Siri, pre-determined text replies to phone calls, the list goes on.
Video: iOS 6 features walkthrough
Conceivably, this could deter iPhone 4S owners from upgrading, though if app developers take advantage of the upgraded processor and screen and launch more iPhone 5-specific content, their arms could be twisted. Not that the pre-sales figures suggest Apple has much to worry about...
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