The world’s most popular smartphone becomes significantly faster,
thinner and lighter this week, while gaining a larger, 4-inch screen —
all without giving up battery life, comfort in the hand and high-quality
construction.
That’s my quick take on Apple’s new iPhone 5, the sixth generation of
the iconic device, which goes on sale on Friday. I’ve been testing the
new iPhone for nearly a week and I like it a lot and can recommend it,
despite a few negatives, such as a new maps app that has one big plus,
but other big minuses. On balance, I still consider the iPhone the best
smartphone on the market, especially with its staggering 700,000
third-party apps and a wealth of available content.
The price is the same — $199 for a 16-gigabyte base model, with
higher-memory models at $299 and $399, all requiring a two-year
contract.
Bigger Screen
In increasing the iPhone’s screen size, Apple took a different
approach than competitors. It kept the same side-to-side width, yet
added height to grow the screen from its previous 3.5-inch size. For
those who prefer the gargantuan screens on some other phones, like the
4.8-inch display on Samsung’s Galaxy S III, the iPhone 5’s screen likely
won’t suffice. These competing big screens are typically both taller
and wider.
However, I found the new iPhone screen much easier to hold and
manipulate than its larger rivals and preferred it. In my view, Apple’s
approach makes the phone far more comfortable to use, especially
one-handed. It’s easier to carry in a pocket or purse and more
natural-looking when held up to your face for a call.
And the moment you turn it on, you notice that the new, larger,
screen can display more content—six rows of icons instead of five; and
more contacts, emails and calendar entries without scrolling.
Despite the larger size, Apple managed to retain the same number of
pixels per inch on the iPhone 5 as on earlier models, so the new model
keeps the “Retina display” effect, which allows for sharp details. The
screen continues to look great.
There’s a temporary downside: Many apps will fail to fill the whole
of the larger screen until they are revised. But they still work as
intended.
Design
While this new model isn’t a radical redesign, it offers a much
bigger change than the current iPhone 4S did when it was launched last
year. The minute you pick the iPhone 5 up you notice it’s much
lighter—20 percent lighter, in fact. It’s so much lighter that you
wonder if it’s a demonstration mock-up, not the real thing.
Yet unlike many competitors, this isn’t a plastic,
insubstantial-feeling device. Although Apple claims it’s the world’s
thinnest smartphone—18 percent thinner than the prior model—the iPhone 5
retains Apple’s trademark, solid-feeling, metal construction, with an
aluminum back this time, instead of a glass back. Like many Apple
products, it’s gorgeous.
There’s one design change that’s already rankling people, however: To
accommodate the thinner design, Apple has adopted a new, thinner
connector on the phone for plugging in the charger cable and connecting
to accessories, like speaker docks. A new cable is included, but owners
of the new phone will have to buy $29 adapters to keep using existing
accessories.
The iPhone 5 also boasts a large array of new software features —
though nearly all are available for older iPhones as well, via a
free upgrade to the operating system, called iOS 6.
Speed, Battery and Camera
Perhaps the single biggest functional improvement in this iPhone —
something you can’t get by upgrading the software on an older model — is
speed. Apple has finally connected the iPhone to the fastest cellular
data network, called LTE, and data downloads and uploads just fly, even
when you aren’t on Wi-Fi. Also, the processor now has twice the previous
speed.
Apple is hardly the first smartphone maker to include LTE. In fact,
it’s one of the last. But including it in the popular iPhone is a big
deal, especially since, unlike on some early LTE models, the blazing
cellular technology doesn’t decimate the battery life on this phone.
Using an iPhone 5 on the Verizon LTE network in Silicon Valley and
Washington, D.C., I averaged almost 26 megabits per second for downloads
and almost 13 megabits per second for uploads. Download speeds peaked
at 42 megabits per second. These speeds are more than 10 times the
typical speeds I got on an iPhone 4S running Verizon’s slower 3G network
and are faster than most Americans’ home Internet services. While LTE
affects only data, voice calls I made on the iPhone 5 were clear, better
than in the past. I had no dropped calls.
The iPhone 5’s battery lasted between 9 and 12 hours every day, in
mixed use. For most people, the phone would last the day without
recharging.
Apple shrunk the size of the rear camera, but kept the 8-megapixel
resolution and added a cool, easy panorama feature and the ability to
take still photos while making a video. Photos and videos I took looked
great and were improved when in low light.
Maps and Software
Google vs. Apple
Compare screen shots of Google’s maps app and Apple’s own maps app.
The biggest drawback I found is the new Maps app. Apple has replaced
Google Maps with a new maps app of its own. This app has one huge
advantage over the iPhone version of Google Maps — it now offers free,
voice-prompted, turn-by-turn navigation. Google had made this available
on its Android phones, but not the iPhone. Apple’s navigation worked
very well, with clear directions displayed as large green highway signs.
But the app is in other ways a step backward from the familiar Google
app. For instance, while Apple’s maps feature a 3-D “Flyover” view of
some central cities, they lack Google’s very useful ground-level
photographic street views. And they also lack public-transit routing.
Apple will instead link you to third-party transit apps. Also, while I
found Apple’s maps accurate, they tend to default to a more zoomed-in
view than Google’s, making them look emptier until you zoom out.
Siri, Apple’s voice-controlled intelligent assistant, can still be
unreliable (it’s still a beta) but I had success with some of its new
features, such as looking up movies and sports scores. It now allows you
to dictate and post Facebook status messages and book restaurant
reservations via the separate OpenTable app.
Speaking of Facebook, Apple has added sharing to that service as a built-in feature that works with many apps on the phone.
There’s also a nice new feature that lets you respond to a call you
can’t take with either a canned text message (such as “I’ll call you
later”) or a reminder to call back.
Apple’s FaceTime video-calling service now works over cellular
connections as well as Wi-Fi. I was able to make several crystal-clear
video calls over LTE, one from a parked car.
And Apple is introducing a new photo-sharing service, which lets you
set up a stream of selected pictures and invite specific friends to
subscribe to it. Any new pictures you add to these shared Photo Streams
pop up on subscribers’ phones and they can comment on them.
Some rival phones boast some features Apple chose to omit. These
include a wireless function called NFC, for paying for goods wirelessly,
and face recognition for logging into your phone. But I regard such
features as either little-used or unperfected. For instance, NFC isn’t
available in most stores and, in my tests, facial recognition on phones
has failed to work time and again. For some, these features matter a
lot, but I’d bet most users won’t care about them, at least in their
current state.
Carrier Plans
Carrier plans for the new iPhone are too complex to detail here. In
general, if you’re a current iPhone user, you won’t be able to upgrade
at the $199 price unless you’ve had your current phone for a minimum
period. And unlimited-data plans generally aren’t available to new
users, though Verizon will sell you one if you are an existing customer
with unlimited data and pay an unsubsidized price of $649 for the phone.
AT&T will allow existing users with unlimited plans to keep them,
even at the subsidized phone price, if they’ve had their current iPhones
for a certain length of time, generally around 20 months. Sprint is the
exception: It offers unlimited data to all iPhone buyers, existing and
new.
Upgrading
If you own an iPhone 4S and especially if your carrier won’t let you
upgrade yet at the $199 price, you may be content with just upgrading to
the new software, which gives you a lot. But you’ll be stuck with the
smaller screen, bulkier size and pokier cellular speed. If you own an
older model iPhone, or are switching from another phone, however, the
iPhone 5 is an excellent choice.
Bottom Line
Apple has taken an already great product and made it better, overall.
Consumers who prefer huge screens or certain marginal features have
plenty of other choices, but the iPhone 5 is an excellent choice.
