Apple unveiled the new iPhone 5 today in San Francisco. As it turns
out, most of the individual rumors about it were true — but even so,
they didn’t describe the whole package.
The new phone is the same width as the old one, but taller and
thinner, as though someone ran over the old iPhone with a steamroller.
When held horizontally, the four-inch screen has 16:9 proportions, a
perfect fit for HDTV shows and a better fit for movies. The added screen
length gives the Home screen room for a fifth row of icons.
The band around the edges is still silver on the white iPhone — but
on the black model, it’s black with a gleaming, reflective bezel. It
looks awesome.
The back is aluminum now. The strips at the top and bottom of the
back are made of glass, the better to allow the wireless signal through —
but as a side benefit, you can now tell which way is front as you fish
the thing out of your pocket.
The processor, with a new design, is twice as fast, according to
Apple. And the iPhone has 4G LTE, meaning superfast Internet in select
cities.
Not many rumor mills predicted the improvement in the camera. It’s an
eight-megapixel model with an f/2.4 aperture, meaning that it lets in a
lot of light. The panorama mode is the best you’ve ever seen: as you
swing the camera in an arc in front of you, a preview screen shows you
the resulting panorama growing in real time. I took only two panorama
shots in my limited time with the iPhone 5, but they came out crazy
good.
The camera takes 40 percent less time between shots, it can recognize
up to 10 faces (for focus and exposure purposes) and it can take still
photos even while you’re filming video.
The new phone also offers better battery life (eight hours of talk
time or Web browsing), according to Apple (I haven’t tested it yet). It
also has noise cancellation both for outgoing and incoming sound. The
phone is also ready for wideband audio — your callers won’t have that
tinny phone sound, but richer, more FM-radioish sound — but that
requires the carrier to upgrade its network. The catch: no American
carriers have announced plans to do that.
At first glance, there’s really only one cause for pause: Apple has
replaced the 30-pin charging/syncing connector that’s been on every
iPhone, iPad and iPod since 2003. According to Apple, it’s simply too
big for its new, super-thin, super-packed gadgets.
So with the iPhone and the new iPod models also announced today,
Apple is replacing that inch-wide connector with a new, far smaller one
it’s calling Lightning.
I’ll grudgingly admit that the Lightning connector is a great design:
it clicks nicely into place, but it can be yanked out quickly. It goes
in either way — there’s no “right side up,” as there was with the old
connector. And it’s tiny, which is Apple’s point.
Still, think of all those charging cables, docks, chargers, car
adapters, hotel-room alarm clocks, speakers and accessories—hundreds of
millions of gadgets that will no longer fit the iPhone.
Apple will sell two adapters, a simple plug adapter for $30 or one
with a six-inch cable for $40, to accommodate accessories that can’t
handle the plug adapter.
That’s way, way too expensive. These adapters should not be a profit
center for Apple; they should be a gesture of kindness to those of us
who’ve bought accessories based on the old connector. There’s going to
be a lot of grumpiness in iPhoneland, starting with me.
Overall, though, Apple seems to have put its focus on the important
things you want in an app phone: size, shape, materials, sound quality,
camera quality and speed (both operational and Internet data), and
that’s good. I’ll have a full review once I’ve had some time to test the
thing.
The new iPhone goes on sale on Sept. 21 for $200 with a two-year
contract from Verizon, Sprint or AT&T. (That’s the 16-gigabyte
model. You can get 32 gigs for $300 or 64 gigs for $400.)
If you’re content with last year’s technology — or 2010’s — you can
also get the iPhone 4 free with a two-year contract, or the iPhone 4S
(16 gigs) for $100 with contract.
The holiday shopping season has begun.
