iPhone 5, the world's most-awaited gadget, is here. iPhone has been here since 2007, but Apple gave it a completely new avatar made of glass and aluminium on Wednesday in a bid to take on the rising challenge from Android brigade.
iPhone 5 is everything that a smartphone owner could possibly ever desire for: It is taller, leaner, lighter, shinier and packs in much more punch than ever.
However, Apple did well to retain the same price tags as earlier generation iPhone 4S. iPhone 5 will cost the same as its predecessor -- $199, $299 and $399 for 16, 32 and 64 GB versions respectively. For now, Apple has announced iPhone in two dual-tone colours black and slate as well as white and silver, with aluminium finish.
Pre-orders for the iPhone 5 will commence on September 14 and it will hit the shelves in US, UK,Canada, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore on September 21, followed by 22 more countries on September 28. Apple again did not make any announcement about India launch plans, but iPhone 5 is expected to arrive in India in the first half of November.
The new iPhone 5 is 7.66mm thick, almost a whopping 18% thinner than its predecessor iPhone 4S, weighs just 112 gram, again 20% lighter than 4S. It packs a phenomenal Retina display with 326 pixels per inch, 1136x640 pixel resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio for full-screen movie playback.
Under the hood, the Apple iPhone runs on a new dual-core Cortex A6 processor based on A-15 chips from ARM, which makes the device twice as fast as its predecessor without being quad-core. In fact, in another first for iPhone, the iPhone 5 uses a common chip for voice as well as data, along with a single radio chip.
Apple, which received a bit of flak on the battery front in the past, seems to have reworked the battery of iPhone 5 with 225 hours of standby time. This includes 8 hours of 3G and 4G LTE browsing, 8 hours of 3G talk time, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video playback and 40 hours of music play.
There seems to be some disappointment in store for those who were expecting a 12 megapixel camera in iPhone 5. The phone sports an 8MP HD rear camera with panorama mode (at 28MP), backside illumination, hybrid IR filter, five element lens, and f/2.4 aperture.
Other features of the camera -- 25% smaller than the snapper on iPhone 4S -- include dynamic low light mode, sapphire crystal and precision lens alignment, all of which are enough for iPhone 5 to be taken seriously for its camera.
The front camera in iPhone 5 for FaceTime will now support HD videos at 720p. It has an aluminium rear sensor and features three microphones -- one each at the bottom, top and rear. For further audio enhancement during FaceTime calls, iPhone 5 features a new beam-forming, directional microphone system, with background noise cancellation technology.
What's more, in the iOS6 users can now share pictures via iCloud's Shared Photo Streams using the iPhone 5.
Significantly, iPhone 5 will have LTE 4G functionality that can transfer data at much faster rate. The phone will be able to switch between antennae in order to support the network.
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