Apple iPhone 5 Announced – Everything You Need To Know

As expected, the iPhone 5 comes with an evolutionary design update, along with specifications bump that puts it at the level of fellow high-end Android smartphones like the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III. Check out the full details after the jump.

Design

The first and foremost feature people will notice is the design. The general shape is quite similar to the iPhone 4 / 4S with its metal band, and flat front / back. The biggest noticeable differences are its increased display size and aluminum + glass back.

iPhone 5 comes with a widescreen 4-inch Retina display with a resolution of 1136 x 640 with a pixel density 326PPI. This makes the new iPhone the same width as the iPhone 4S, only taller / longer depending on which orientation you’re looking at it. Once apps get updated to support the new display, they will show more content.

The display has 44% more color saturation than the previous generation iPhone, and features integrated touch technology, which means that the iPhone 5’s display and the touch sensors have been united once and for all.

Hardware

Following the old tradition of ‘thinner and lighter’, the iPhone 5 weighs in at just 112 grams, is 20% lighter than the iPhone 4S and is the thinnest smartphone to date with a depth of just 7.6mm.

Instead of glass and glass only on the back like with the iPhone 4 / 4S, the iPhone 5’s back plate is two-toned: there is glass at the very top and bottom, but other than that it is all metal. This is a welcome design feature, as the weak non-Gorilla-Glass of the 4 and 4S was a rather serious problem.

The same old Home button sits at the center, underneath the screen, the volume buttons on the left hand-side, along with the mute/un-mute switch.

Internals

iPhone 5 is powered by a an A6 processor which is 2x faster than the A5, so you can rest assured that everything loads quicker, apps load faster and games look stunning. 

Android enthusiasts can finally stop claiming that their phones are technically superior as the iPhone is now right up there with them! Last year, it was proved with benchmarks that the iPhone 4S’ 800MHz A5 dual-core chip was faster than the 1.2GHz dual-core Exynos chip on the Galaxy S II and Snapdragon processors on other HTC phones. The same may just happen again this year. We’ll have to wait and see for the first benchmarks to come in.

The device’s speaker has shrunk down 20%, and the earpiece now supports noise cancellation for crisp and clear voice calls.

Camera

Despite having a year to improve their cameras, other smartphone manufacturers (save for Nokia) have still not come up with optics that totally beat the iPhone 4S’. This hasn’t stopped Apple from improving things, though, as the camera on the iPhone 5 gets dynamic low light mode, precision lens alignment, sapphire crystal, so your images come out in far greater quality while maintaining the same image resolution – 8 megapixels. The front-facing camera’s resolution has been increased to 720p HD from VGA on previous phones.

Here comes the fun part in the camera, the iPhone 5 comes with Panorama mode, so you can capture wide landscapes with ease, and saves the image at a whooping 28-megapixels resolution.

Battery

The battery has been improved as well, and gives up to 8 hours of battery life on LTE, which quite honestly steamrolls the competition out of the water. Apple has managed to match, and improve upon the iPhone 4S’ battery to take things up a notch while on the go.

Lightning Port

The iPhone 5 also features the new smaller dock connector. The new dock connector has been named Lightning, which quite frankly, fits in very well with the speeds it has to offer.

The major features of the new Lightning dock connector are: it is 80% smaller than the previous 30-pin connector, it has an adaptive interface, more durable, and can be plugged in to the device in any orientation.

Nano-SIM

The iPhone 5 uses a new type of SIM card, which on many occasions have been referred to as Nano-SIM. Those iPhone users who are great with their scissor ninja skills and can cut down a regular SIM to a Micro-SIM will be disappointed to know that the Nano-SIM is completely different from the Micro-SIM and cannot be made at home. Hence, you have to get a new SIM card from your network carrier, which is compatible with the iPhone 5.

Price

Pricing is the usual we’ve come to expect over the last three years. The 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models cost $199, $299, and $399 respectively with a two-year contract from AT&T, Verizon or Sprint. The iPhone 5 will be available in two colors – black and white.