So the Apple iPhone 5 was announced in San Francisco last night to either your awe or disappointment. Or perhaps your indifferent to it. Either way we would like to know what you thought of last night’s news:
How does the iPhone 5 compare to Android headliners such as the Galaxy S3, Xperia T and HTC One X?
IS NFC too important a feature now to have been omitted?
What do you think of the new features that have been announced; do they offer what you would have hoped for or are you left wanting more?
Are you left comparing hardware and software to features in top of the range Android handsets?
The connector has been changed. If you’re an existing Apple user, is this enough to influence your buying decision or do you accept that this was necessary? Could they have used MicroUSB?
We won’t go into too much detail about the event, but the main features of the new iPhone are listed below. We’ll have the iPhone 5 listed on the Clove site shortly, with plenty of comparison articles to follow on the Clove Blog in the coming weeks.
Apple iPhone 5 main features:
- Available in Black or White
- 16/32/64GB memory
- 4-inch retina display
- Apple A6 Processor
- 16:9 aspect ratio
- 8 megapixel iSight camera
- Panorama mode
- 1.2MP, HD front facing camera
- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, LTE, HSPA+
- A-GPS and GLONASS
- Digital Compass
- New ‘lightning’ connector
- Glass & aluminium design
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I’m not really the target market for this, but it’s not going to win me back from Android, having moved on after owning the 3G, 3GS, 4 and 4S. Still only 64Gb max (my essential music collection is 38Gb, that doesn’t leave an awful lot of space for system, applications, video…), and still a PITA to add video to, if you’ve got a substantial number in itunes. The things they’ve updated are good – increased screen size is good, but not really enough for me, even low end Androids are 3.8in now. Losing the back glass is severely overdue (amazing how many shattered iphones you see about), and drops the weight back to where it should be for this size. With the connector, I cant help thinking that they could have been a bit more ambitious and implemented something like the magnetic connectors they use on laptops, and save a lot of fiddling around. At least that would be some justification for using something proprietary. So, not for me, I like a bit more control and flexibility, something I can add music or video to away from my PC without going through specific stores, and that I can customise and add applications to freely. I’m sure they’ll sell a load to iphone owners coming up for contract renewals, folk who like it simple, or fanboys who’d buy a bucket if it had an Apple logo on it.
Thanks for your comment Ian; I didn’t realise you had owned so many of the previous iPhones so it’s interesting to hear the POV of someone that has used both Android and iOS thoroughly.
We were saying in the office earlier about how many shattered iPhones 4/4s you see around, hopefully they have fixed it with this. The connector is a move that’s pretty unfair to the Apple faithful – they’ve clearly worked out the elasticity is such that they can get people to buy a connector/new accessories.
Thanks; I can understand why they held on to the old 30-pin connector for so long, with all the legacy from the original Ipod onwards, but when the need came to use a smaller connector, I really can’t see why they’ve created another new “standard” rather than go with microUSB. I forget the details, but wasn’t the microUSB standardisation agreement between manufacturers that where it wasn’t used, phone manufacturers would include an adaptor for free? I don’t remember seeing one packed with the 4s..? Using the NanoSIM is another gripe, and since there’s no way to convert Nano to Micro/MiniSIM using eg. a knife, this looks likely to stop people moving between handsets quite so easily.
Yea it really should be microUSB. It just enables them to make more money not doing so. I think it may have been that an adaptor had to be available to buy, not included for free. Not certain though.
Yea it’s a big enough hassle switching between normal and microSIM, and they can be cut down to size.
They’d never go for microUSB; that’d risk people being able to use non-Apple phones with docks.
As it stands the lack of docks and accessories for Android and Windows Phone is a big advantage to Apple.
True, but now all those iphone docks are obsolete. Will third party manufacturers just immediately redesign with a new connector, expecting to sell the same accessories to the same people? Maybe they’ll consider microUSB variants to serve the growing Android sector too.
The only problem with Android (microUSB) docks such as the Philips ones is that they cannot transfer sound, so only charge the handset when docked. I guess the only way to solve this would be to build a dock that transfers sound via MHL. Not sure if that’s possible though.
Well Apple’s obviously going to make some more millions selling a little piece of plastic to people for £25.
Apparently Apple’s not allowing other companies to make the adapters, which makes me wonder if manufacturers will be allowed to make their docks compatible with both the old and new connectors. You wouldn’t think Apple could be that unreasonable though, unless you’d been following the court cases…
Chris the best option is to build in Apt-X support. The sound quality’s fantastic; it’s not quite lossless but it’s near as dammit. The S3 and HTC One-X already support it, plus a bunch of other fairly new phones. I’ve only heard of one or two docks that support it so far.
AFAIK the iPhone 5 doesn’t have Apt-X support, which to me is as big an ommission as NFC. I guess it’s because they have their own proprietary AirPlay protocol.
Once wireless charging becomes more common dock makers won’t have to worry about the actual docking (which is awkward as there are so many Android phones). Just rest the phone on the charging pad, which will also have an NFC tag in it, and the phone will automatically connect using Apt-X and also charge.
Once docks can easily support any recent Android phone we’ll start to see far more of them released, and one of Apple’s last remaining advantages will be gone.
Google needs to start mandating certain features such as Apt-X and wireless charging. If they could also mandate removable batteries and microSD slots that’d be good too ;o)
Sadly it is confirmed that the Iphone 5 does not have APT-X
Damn!!!!
It actually looks like nanoSIMs will be able to installed into micro- and mini-SIM devices; there are pictures over on Engadget of the new Russian Doll adaptor family. And of Apple’s £15 (you were right!) microUSB adaptor…
I’d heard the leaks but I reallly thought they’d throw something more in, even if it wasn’t a hardware thing. I’m not their target market either though; I’d never buy an Apple product.
I think most people who upgrade from a 4S to the 5 will be doing so just because they want the latest and greatest iPhone; I don’t see anything significant enough to justify the cost.
Nothing surprising to me about the iphone 5 launch besides apple finally stopped being stubborn about the aspect ratio of their devices and no NFC, no doubt though I admit, it’ll be the highest selling phone model of the financial year and still something many will still try to top by creating the next “iphone killer”. Hardware wise, nothing the average high end android phones haven’t crossed or are already racing to top.
One thing I do like and would like to see in other phones is the LTE radio that they put in the phone that seems to support many different bands and frequencies for LTE, that helps a lot especially you’re not stuck with a 4G phone that can’t use 4G when you move across carriers or to some other part of the world that uses a different frequency..
correcting myself seems, there’s three different iphone models supporting different LTE bands each instead of one model which supports all, would be nice to have one that does though
http://www.apple.com/au/iphone/specs.html
Yea it would make life much easier, 4G is going to complicate things somewhat.
Here’s way too much information about what would be involved in doing that http://www.anandtech.com/show/6295/why-the-iphone-5-lacks-simultaneous-voice-and-lte-or-evdo-svlte-svdo-support-
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