Apple iPhone 5

iPhone 5

Apple's iPhone is a device that many want to covet, one way or another. The strange thing is that the phone itself is no better than anything else available on the market. In fact, in many aspects it is inferior to the multitude of handsets made by other manufacturers, but what the iPhone has in its favour is appeal. Lot and lots of appeal. This is mainly thanks to the amount of marketing thrown at it by Apple and the late Steve Jobs, making a somewhat good device into a very desirable one.

I have mentioned many times that I used to despise Apple because I used to socialise with the I.T. elite, people that shun Apple and any of her devices as mere travesties of proper made hardware, properly conceived products. Now, today, after owning so many of their products, I can safely say that I shall never approach another Apple device with such prejudice. I have noticed that those who complain about how Apple iPhones are rubbish and they would rather own an Android, are the main people to moan. I have never seen an owner of an iPhone talk down to somebody that owns a different type of device such as Samsung's Galaxy S2/S3 or one of those Windows Phone 7/8 machines, but Android nerds would always open their mouths about it first. Sometimes I just wish we would all used Windows Phone and this argument be over.

I have used a lot of devices during my lifetime, and have experienced all the main interfaces in use today. In fact, my previous phone was a Sony Xperia S, a wonderful android phone with many new features such as NFC, but I can safely say that the iPhone 5 is a better product. This is not at all scientific and purely out of my own experiences with these products, but I do not regret at all my decision to trade in the Sony device for an iPhone 5.

Being an owner of previous iPhones before this one, I was already well aware of how to use an iPhone, therefore picking it up was easy as the layout and methods of operating such devices has not changed much at all. That is the beauty of the phone, it is easy to pick up for first time users, and after that all iterations of the phone are even easier because you already know the basics.

I'll be completely honest, I was very close to being unable to write this review for you because I wanted to save money for a holiday my wife and I were planning for so long, but as news coverage appeared about the release of this new iPhone, and seeing the massive queues that were forming outside Apple's Regent Street branch, my wife was suddenly swept up in the furore (from home, you mind), and exclaimed with much heartiness:

"Honey, we need to get a pair of iPhone 5s!"

She was using an iPhone 4, not the 4S, just the 4, so she justified owning the new one because she has held out for 2 years for a properly new iPhone.

"They are so expensive though, we could get first class plane tickets with that kind of money."

Now gentlemen, here is some advice from me. When you get as old as I am, you do not argue with your wife, especially when she is really enthusiastic about something. My old friend just went on a European caravaning holiday not because he wanted to, but because his wife heard from her friend that she did it, therefore she was adamant they would do it as well. His early attempt to justify not going because of issues, i.e. buying the caravan, dealing with the French, were met with metaphorical hostile action by his wife. I have learnt from his experience, and so should you. Pick your fights.

The iPhone 5 promised to be twice as fast as the iPhone 4s, as well as having many new, amazing features to make using your iPhone a much jollier time. I had to see for myself how good it really was.

Pre-purchase issues

So I began checking into the prices of the devices so that I was sure they would be expensive. And they were. £529 for the 16GB, £599 for the 32GB and £699 for the 64GB. These are unlocked handsets from Apple directly, and they were not messing around, the prices were excrutiatingly ludicrous. Getting new mobile contracts was out of the question, and my wife wanted the 64GB version. I plumped for the 32GB to save some money as 16GB was way too meagre for anybody's taste unless you stream everything to your phone. Just knowing a large, gaping chasm where my money used to be in our bank account hurt me inside.

The next issue was getting the darn things. They were sold out everywhere I looked, from Apple's online store to the many highstreet stores lining my Town Centre. The only places to get them were on eBay and this strange, grungy place called CEX, but they demanded an extra premium on top of about an extra £150! That £850 for a 64GB handset! Insanity.

Even if I did get them, I'd have had to wrestle with the fact that it had this new connector port on the phone called the Lightning port that is much smaller than the existing iPhone ports we're so familiar with. This was annoying because I have many docks and spares for the iPhone that uses the older port, and now I have to replace them all because Apple thought it would be nicer. And they have an adaptor in case you want to use your old accessories, for £25. £25 for an adaptor? Is it made from reinforced gold?

Finally, the phone uses a new SIM format called nanoSIM. iPhone 4 introduced the microSIM, and had many of us getting new SIMS from our network providers, sometimes at a cost, to be able to use the new handset. Now that microSIM has become accepted as the new standard, Apple introduces another new format that is even smaller and easier to lose. I rang up Orange to ask them if I could get a nanoSIM from them, and they said they would have to add an extra £10 on top, every month on what I am paying for the ‘special’ iPhone data service. I just told them to get stuffed, and I did what a lot of people did afterwards. When I got the phone, I cut my microSIM card to make it smaller, by just cutting around the edge of the golden contact area. And guess what? It fits, and it works. So much for ‘special’ iPhone data service.

Receipt of phones

I would have rather waited for the phone from the official providers themselves than pay a premium due to shortages of the device, so I ordered them from the Apple website. Despite saying on the website that it would take 3-4 weeks to be available for shipping, I received both handsets in the post in about a week. That was a very pleasant surprise indeed.

The version I got was the black 32GB version. It resides in the same black coffin-like box as the iPhone’s before it (white box for the white version I got my wife), and it has a similar layout with a tray at the top separating the phone from the accessories it is packaged with. The accessories are arranged in a very neatly packed box, with the charger head, lightning USB cable and the new EarPod earphones. The manual box with the SIM ejector tool is provided like normal.

EarPods

Sitting in its own plastic Ferrero Rocher-isk box, these new earphones from Apple promises to be better than previous earphones provided by Apple. And it’s true, these earphones are a masive improvement from the originals as they have been designed to sit and transmit audio directly through into your ear canal, making them louder, clearer and crisper. They have the same type of volume controls on the earphone wire as the previous pair, but slightly larger and on the right wire and not the left. They do take some getting used to as, unlike the originals that just sat in your ear, these follow the contours of your ear with a slight funnel into your ear canal, so it feels a little awkward. But once you are accustomed to the sensation, the audio just sounds more alive and kicking against your eardrums.

The bass is now actually noticeable as the low thrumming of certain instruments can be heard and felt inside your head. I do believe that these youngster that are into their R’n’B and dubstepping would appreciate these earphones as they would be able to gallavant from one crib to the next, enjoying their hip tunes. I apologise for the attempted young speak.

There also appears to be less noise leakage as well, so the innocent bystanders of the public would not have to hear what sort of backwater music is playing back across your earlobes. That was my main gripe about the original earphones, they leaked everything I was listening so that even the deaf and partially blind Derek at the other end of the bus would know I was listening to Cream.

Sure, it doesn’t take much to be better than the original earphones, but these are a major step up from them. These EarPods are not as good as a lot of earphones available at the moment, such as the Shure range or Bose range, but you would not be disappointed using these, believe you me. The only downside to them is that they look very distinctive, so muggers could see you a mile off and know you’re using a new Apple product.

Lightning port/cable

This was one of the biggest issues I had with the new iPhone, the new port and cable, dubbed ‘Lightning’ by Apple, to replace the iconic 30 pin cable we’ve come to associate with Apple devices. At first I thought that this was a way to make more money off us because of their idiotic way of selling the £25 adaptor so that you could still use your docks and spare chargers, but after using it I can see why Apple went with this.

The charger head and the USB cable itself looks pretty much the same as existing chargers: white triangular charger head with white USB cable, ending in a proprietary plug that can be used with Apple products only. The difference is that the end is much smaller, and it has only 16 pins. Honestly, the port and the cable plug is about 50mm wide, that is a significant change to the original one that was about 20mm wide.

The aim of the new port and cable seems to be that Apple want to speed up charge times, and it does this by making the charge head being able to be plugged into the phone in both orientations. In the original, you had to look out for the rectangular symbol to know that it faced the right way before plugging it into your phone, else risk damaging the port. Now, you simply grab it, and plug it in. The pins seem to have a dynamic pin switching system so it knows the orientation of the plug, and switches the data and charging pins accordingly. Smart technology, but if you use a dock, it’s not really going to be an issue is it?

The other reason is my favourite, the speed of the recharge. The iPhone 5 recharges so quickly that it blows my mind. I used the iPhone 5 until its battery was at 50%, so I plugged it into the charger for a recharge. I went off for about 15 minutes to do my own thing, until my wife asked me to call our friend to ask if they were still still coming over for dinner. So I went back to my iPhone (closest telephony equipment at the time), and the phone was at 80%. I had to double check, and it did say 80%. That was unexpectedly quick. Usually it would charge to about 60% at best on the iPhone 4 or 4s, but to charge that rapidly was just amazing. It is very convenient, especially when you’re my age and you want every second to count, but I am not sure what the speedy recharge is doing to the battery. I hope nothing explodes *touch wood*

The thing to watch out for is that despite the Lightning moniker, transfer speeds aren’t very fast. I checked it, and the fastest you can expect to transfer data is at USB 2 speeds, not even USB 3. I have USB 3 and I cannot use it because the phone is bottlenecking it, but that is not a big issue since I stream a lot of my content off the internet anyway.

The handset

The handset itself is a beauty to behold. Somehow, Apple have managed to make the phone thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4/4s, and yet keep it feeling premium in the hand. The front and rear camera lenses are still in place, as well as the LED flash at the back. They have also stretched it length-wise to incorporate the 4 inch retina screen. All the buttons are where they should be, the volume buttons and the silent switch are to the left side of the phone, the power button at the top right and the home button on the face. The difference is now the earphone port is at the bottom of the phone, similar to the iPod Touch. I think the change is due to the placement of the aerial because I cannot think of a reason why they should move it down, but that’s just speculation on my part.

The silver bezel that used to grace the edges of the iPhone 4 and 4s is, on the black model, anodised to make it blend in with the rest of the handset, causing the phone to have this unified look that I find really improves the finish of the phone. Even the microphone and loudspeaker holes at the bottom of the phone are beautifully machined as cut-out holes, as opposed to the pill-shaped holes for both on the older iPhones.

Something to note is that although the phone is made of glass and aluminium, if it gets scratched, you will see silver underneath, and the black colour may start chipping off after a while. Apple have said that this is a normal occurrence, but I say you should buy a case for the phone, and leave it in there.

iOS

The iPhone 5 comes preinstalled with the latest version of iOS, version 6. Apple bang on about how there are all these improvements, but the fact is that most of them are behind the scenes and that you wouldn’t really notice them that much. Very little has changed for the user interface, but that doesn’t stop the phone being super fast and easy to use.

The screen looks great with the retina display, with great viewing angles, brightness and sharpness. Apple kept the clarity of the iPhone 4/4s screens here, but it is no longer the sharpest screen in the market thanks to all those 1280x720 HD screens being used on other phones (such as my previous Xperia S). Still, it is extremely sharp and allows iOS to look great.

You still swipe from left to right to unlock the phone, the main screen still has 4 columns of icons, and at the bottom of the screen we still have the 4 main base apps that can be edited to hold other apps in their place. Thanks to the larger screen, we have an extra 4 icons at the bottom so you have access to more apps per screen. Swiping down from the top brings down the notifications tray that also allows you to see the weather and the current state of the stock exchange.

You still have to synchronise the phone with iTunes to get your songs, photos and movies onto the phone, and the App Store is still the only way to get officially authorised apps to download onto your phone. I still do not like iTunes very much as the software has remained rather confusing to use due to how each handset needs to be associated with a computer otherwise it wouldn’t work properly etc, but I rarely use iTunes for my content and I just use a third party App to handle my media.

Pressing and holding down the home button would bring up Siri, allowing you to ask it a variety of questions for convenience, and it works very well now. Pressing the home button twice brings up the multitasking task bar to show you what is running in the background so that you can close it. All very easy to use.

The main changes that I can see with the software in version 6 are:
- The new Apple Maps app that replaces Google Maps (more on this later)
- The PassBook app for digital plane and train tickets (more on this later as well)
- Improved Mail app that allows you to directly apply photos and videos to an email easily
- Improved Siri functionality so it can recognise more voice commands, and actually work properly in the UK
- Panoramic photo taking that allows you to make a full 280 degree photo

The improvements are really welcome as they make using the iPhone much more convenient since you could quickly do what you want with less hassle. I particularly enjoy using the panoramic photo taking that allows you to take a 280 degree picture and store it on your phone in very high quality.

There is one app missing upon switching on that I immediately noticed, and that is YouTube. For some deranged reason, Apple have seen fit to have the app removed, despite having it be available with every release of an iPhone up to iPhone 4s. This is easily remedied by downloading the YouTube app from the App Store, but seriously, why do we have to do this? I use YouTube a lot because of the speed of the HD video streams, so I was understandably disappointed, if not a little upset, at the prospect of having no YouTube. And no, I will not use a third party YouTube app, they are infinitely inferior.

iCloud still only offers 5GB of free cloud storage, so that has not changed, and we still do not have NFC because Apple say that the near-field technology isn’t as widely available as it should be. I disagree there since we’re using it a lot in London with the Oyster Card and the quick payment debit card machines.

The new apps

The new apps provided with iOS 6 appear to be very useful, until you actually try to use them. These new apps actually caused a lot of disappointment for me, and I shudder now just thinking about them.

First I would like to talk about the PassBook, which sounds very good in theory, but right now is as useful as a 6th finger. The concept is that you can buy your plane or train tickets via one of the PassBook compatible apps, and then save the ticket as a QR code or barcode to be shown later on your phone, for it to be scanned by the airline/ticket inspector. I thought that this was a great idea as I sometimes catch one of those Virgin Trains, but hark, there is no Virgin Trains PassBook compatible app. At the moment, there are only a few apps available via PassBook, such as American Airlines, United Airlines, i.e. nothing useful to somebody British.

And then we come to the Apple Maps app, which nearly had me returning the phone to Apple in a rage. The original Google Maps app was a very useful, very dependable app that could tell me where I was, the direction I was facing, as well as being great at showing me where I was with a satellite overlay if required. Apple’s Map app is very similar, extremely pretty, but the one thing is lets me down on is accuracy. What is the most important thing about a map/GPS system? How accurate it is. There is no point having the app look pretty with 3D graphics and smooth flyovers when the ruddy thing can’t accurately guide you to your destination. As an example, I did a check with the app by driving down to a T junction off of my road to get to the petrol station to the left. The app displayed the petrol station as to the right, and much further away than it actually was. If I was depending on this app for a life or death situation where my fuel tank was a deciding factor, I would be dead already. This was rushed, and you can tell.

As a phone

Being called the iPhone, it better had functioned well as a phone, and it does. Calls are easy with the touchscreen keypad, and voices sound clear over the earpiece of the phone. The speakerphone is also very good, very clear with no distortions audible at all. The microphone is exceptionally good, able to pick up my warbling and transmit it across the wireless ether, over to the poor victim of my grating voice. I have not had a single dropped call due to poor signal, and that for me makes it a great 999 phone, assuming you have enough battery left.

Yes, the battery is not bad, but I do find that it drains slightly quicker than the iPhone 4s before it. The device discharges at a steady pace during the day with moderate usage, and by the evening just before bed, the phone drops to 25% and requires a charge. I notice that in the morning after being charged to 100%, if I listen to it as an MP3 player for about an hour, the battery falls to 88%. In comparison, the iPhone 4s I remember using in the same way had around 94% left. It’s not a major issue, and is to be expected when this phone is more powerful, but it does worry me sometimes when I accidentally leave the GPS or the 3G on.

I cannot comment on 4G as it is not available at the moment, but for 3G the speeds are as expected. No difference at all from the previous mobiles.

Camera

There hasn’t been much change between the camera lenses between this iPhone and the previous. The iPhone 5 still comes rocking up with a 8MP camera lenses + LED flash and a 1.3MP front facing camera for Facetime or Skype video conferencing.

The LED is still very puny and not very good at lighting up much for a good photo, but it does make for a very nice torch when used with the appropriate app. I cannot tell the difference between the quality of the photos taken using the lenses of the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 4s, but the main thing is that the pictures don’t look too bad. The 8MP camera at the back can take some very large photos, as well as record 1080p video, both of which can take up a lot of space on your phone. If you have a 16GB phone, you would run out extremely quickly, especially if you had many apps installed as well, so I was glad to have the 32GB version (my wife doubled over with glee with the 64GB she had). The front camera’s quality was still not very good, but it was ok for video conferencing.

One thing that I can say is that the phone can take pictures extremely quickly. I am unsure as if it is down to the CPU of the device or the speed of the camera lens, but capturing images has never been more effortless or convenient for me.

Overall

Overall, despite the many issues I have noted about the device, it is still a very good phone that just oozes style and substance. Sure, there are some teething problems here and there, but given time Apple can make it right and make it work fantastically. For instance, Siri used to be rather rubbish in the UK, but now that it fully works, it is really convenient and can make doing things a mere voice command away.

I like the build quality of the phone as well as the improvements in iOS 6 for its existing apps, and the newer apps appear to have potential when they are fully implemented properly. Yes, you would probably get a faster, more customisable experience with one of the faster sounding Android devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 or the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but I feel that the ease of use, coupled with the aesthetics of the phone, plus the added ease of pocketing and using the phone with one hand thanks to the 4 inch screen, makes this one of the fastest, most portable devices available.

I do not regret exchanging my Xperia S for this phone, but if you had the Xperia S, should you do the same? The answer is to go out and try it for yourself and then decide. I would never recommend the iPhone 5 to a friend because of the ridiculous price as I do not want to be the cause of them going bankrupt, but I would tell them how good the phone is and then let them make their own minds up. If you decide to use your current phone over the iPhone 5 then chances are you’re probably happy with your phone and don’t want to part with it so soon, but if you go for the iPhone 5, just rest assured you would be an owner of one of the sexiest, fastest, easiest to use touchscreen phones in the market. It’s not perfect, but that just add to its charm.

Plus, depreciation doesn’t hit it as hard as Android phones. iPhone 4s is still worth a lot of money second hand, whereas my Xperia S lost half it’s value in 3 months.
if less obviously visit gallery Apple iPhone 5.