BY ALEX BARNARD
Following Apple’s yearly iPhone revision pattern, the unveiling of the iPhone 5 on September 21st came
as a surprise to nobody. Last year’s iPhone 4S faced many criticisms for hinging its existence on its heavily advertised feature Siri, an “intelligent assistant”, which ended up being unable to perform many of its advertised functions. While the iPhone 5 provides several new features that eager fans have been waiting for, it does not offer enough to make it worth an upgrade for those who already have the more recent models (the 4 and the 4s).
The Good
First and foremost, the iPhone 5 has a bigger screen. Apple’s high resolution retina screen technology (336 pixels per inch) has returned, however now is 4 inches, making it 0.5 inches bigger than all previous iPhones. Although this screen enlargement makes the iPhone taller, the width remains the same. This enhancement makes the iPhone 5 better suited for playing widescreen movies in their natural image proportion and eliminates the need to letterbox them with black spaces.
Another advantage of the iPhone 5 is that it has been designed to be much faster than the iPhone 4S. Apple’s new A6 processor is said to be twice as fast as the iPhones 4S’s A5 processor. In other words loading and playing games will be much smoother than ever before. Furthermore, the iPhone 5 supports LTE wireless technology. Basically, it’s a newer and faster standard for mobile internet use, and will allow the iPhone 5 to surf the web much faster than any of the previous iPhones.
The Bad
Despite the new improved processor and bigger screen, the operating system of the iPhone 5 remains mostly unchanged. Running on iOS 6, the iPhone 5 will letterbox older apps. This means that apps will appear exactly the same size as on older iPhones, but black bars will be added to the top and bottom of the iPhone 5’s screen to fill up the rest of the larger screen. Unless updated, apps will simply not take advantage of the iPhone 5’s larger screen size. The iPhone 5’s main visual change is that an additional row of icons has been added to the home screen. A larger screen and faster processor should have led Apple to make more fundamental changes to the way iOS looks and performs; unfortunately they have continued to barely improve the look of the operating system since the first iPhone came out in 2006. With the iPhone 5 being the sixth iPhone, it’s a bit disappointing that Apple hasn’t implemented more essential changes in the way the operating system works, as opposed to Android phones, which are continually evolving.
Apple has also announced that the iPhone 5 will have a new Lightning connector, replacing Apple’s old 30 Pin Connector for charging and connecting to other devices. This new connector will make many old accessories including iHome stereos and car chargers unusable with iPhone 5s unless a special adapter is used with them (the adapter is of course sold separately for a staggering $30).
Despite everything, the new iPhone leaves a lot of room for improvement. Issues like durability and battery longevity have barely been improved upon, and the 30 pin adapter replacement with the Lighting causes only inconveniences with Apple’s loyal fans. The iPhone 5 certainly improves upon the iPhone 4S, but will not be worth an upgrade for those with iPhone 4 and 4S’s. The owners of the more recent iPhones are much better off waiting another year for the inevitable 5S, 5G, or whatever ridiculous name Apple gives its next iPhone iteration. Regardless of a lack of new features, the iPhone 5 will sell tens of millions to Apple’s devoted fans.
