Well, it’s here. And the iPhone 5 is … a little underwhelming?
From an engineering standpoint, though, still an incredible phone. Let’s run through the announcements, shall we?
AT FIRST GLANCE It’s 18 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter than the iPhone 4S.
A BIGGER SCREEN Baby’s packing a new 4-inch screen and 16:9 aspect ratio (like HDTV), with room for a fifth row of apps.
FASTER DATA 4G LTE with Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and Sprint in the U.S., plus loads of other carriers internationally. Apple calls it “ultrafast wireless.”
NEW A6 CHIP A CPU that’s twice as fast as the iPhone 4S and with twice as fast graphics processing. That’ll be great for games.
BATTERY LIFE Talk time is 8 hours and video is 10 hours. Up to 225 hours of standby!
NEW CAMERA Faster image capture and less noise, with a cool new panorama feature.
DOCK REBOOT We’re getting a new, smaller dock connector now called Lightning that has nine pins. You’ll need an adapter to connect the iPhone 5 to all your old speaker docks and whatnot.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, and $399 for 64GB. (Those prices are the same as the iPhone 4S.) That’s with a new two-year contract, of course. Pre-orders begin on Sept. 14 and shipping begins on Sept. 21.
If you’re bummed, there’s always the new iPod nano, iPod touch and iTunes to drown your sorrows in.
iTUNES There’s a new version of iTunes for iOS and OS X. Looks to have a sleeker, more modern user interface. Hopefully Apple has given the app a speed boost, too: iTunes is notoriously slow to use.
iPOD NANO The new iPod nano resembles the older iPod mini with a 2.5-inch display. It supports multi-touch, has a hardware Home button, and will be available in seven colors. It doesn’t appear to run a full version of iOS, but battery life looks to be huge, at 30 hours.
iPOD TOUCH We’re getting a new iPod touch, too, with the same Retina display as the iPhone 5 but the same processor as the iPhone 4 and iPad 2. Translation: games may not look as good on the iPod touch as they do on the iPhone 5. But the 5-megapixel iSight camera means you can probably ditch your stand-alone point-and-shoot now (if you haven’t already).
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