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.
Peter DaSilva for The New York Times The
iPhone 5, right, connects to power cables, stereo docking stations and
other peripherals using a smaller connector that is incompatible with
previous models.
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.