While I admit that looks nice, what the hell has he been doing with his phone? In the old days people kept their stuff for decades. That phone can’t be much more than five years old and it looks like it came over on the Mayflower.
My guess is that 5 years in a pocket with keys will do that for you.
Yeah, but it appears to have 25% more meh than its predecessor, for the same price.
My opinion: not so much a “must upgrade” as a “here’s the reward for those of you who decided to hold out until now”.
iPhone 5 looks good to me. I have a 4S, so I won’t be upgrading this year. Probably next year.
I think most of the people who are underwhelmed by this phone don’t appreciate the difficulty of increasing performance while making things lighter and thinner and keeping the same battery life, or they simply don’t think those things are important, so they see this improvement as being incredibly minor. I would disagree. Phones are incredibly complex and packed into very small spaces. To take an already thin form factor and continue to shrink it and make it lighter is really impressive to me. And it’s something I care about in a phone.
Apple has always prioritized things like size and weight higher than most other phone and computer makers. If you don’t care about those things, then you’re not going to be happy with the tradeoffs you make for them. If you do, Apple products continue to be excellent.
I was most disappointed that the iPod Nano changed form factors. I was really looking forward to them iterating on the watch concept, and was hoping that they’d let people write apps that would run on their phones and communicate with their watches, so you could, say, see a text message without pulling your phone out of your pocket. I still think that’s coming, but maybe in a few years.
I’ve been an Apple computer guy for about 12 years now. We’ve had iMacs, PowerBooks, and PowerBook Pros and MacBooks. My wife and kids each have iPod Touches. I have extended family members and friends that are in love with their iPhones. I’ve always found the Apple interface a thing of beauty, and the OS’s very user friendly. But when I finally upgraded to a smartphone a couple years ago, I went with Droid. For one, it was free with contract. But when I started to use it, I realized I liked it better than the iDevices; for instance, to change a setting in an app, I would just go into Settings from the app. On iOS you have to leave the app and go into the general Settings, and make the change from there. Little things, but these days the differences are all little things.
Last month when I needed a new phone I went Droid again. I don’t see myself switching. And the “Apple does user interface better than anyone” argument doesn’t really hold much water anymore; maybe back when Apple’s biggest rival was Microsoft and both companies were competing for desk real estate rather than Apple vs. the world, competing for pocket space. But not these days.
An eye implant that projects text messages as a virtual head-up display would be cool. Like opera surtitles.
Re the thinness factor, I keep my iPhone in a fairly chunky case, as do many people I know, so that’s not really an issue.
Many apps that are paid-for on iPhone are free on Android, is what I actually meant. I’ve never stolen an app.
I apologize.
That’s a neat idea but fewer and fewer people are wearing watches anymore, especially ones that aren’t high end. I stopped wearing a watch in 1999 when my job issued me my first cell phone. If I want to know what time it is, I look at the clock on my phone.
We are underwhelmed because last year’s top android phones were already that thin and light.
I am not sure I even value thinness beyond a point. I probably prefer 9mm to 7mm. The Droid Razr which is thinner than the iPhone 5 feels too thin to me. I think Apple should have used the extra space for a bigger battery. The battery capacity is basically the same as the 4S and a lot less than some of the top Android phones like the Razr Maxx. I am quite skeptical of the battery numbers they claimed; I suspect the battery life while using LTE will be quite poor.
Name them. It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that I can’t seem to find a 2011 smartphone that is thinner than 7.6mm at its thickest point.
I believe Google’s working on it with Glass.
I know. I don’t wear one either. But I would if it were awesome and was linked to my phone and ran apps.
Apple’s been pretty honest and straightforward with battery life numbers for the last decade at least in my experience (They may have always been honest, I just wasn’t paying attention before around 2003).
Can you link to some examples? I don’t disbelieve you, I just don’t really follow the latest in Android phones.
A fairer challenge would be for 2011 smartphones that were thinner than the 4S (9.3mm), or as thin as the iPhone 5.
Dog80 did not claim they were already thinner than the iPhone 5.
Anyway…
Motorola Razr: 7.1mm
HTC and Samsung had models that were around 8mm, in 2011 IIRC
ETA: OK, it looks like the Razr had a thicker bit at the top where the camera lens was. Don’t think that really invalidates Dog80’s claim though.
Awesome, thanks, guys!
I think reasonable people can disagree.
If you want the part you generally hold in your hand to be thin, then the Razr meets that criterion. If you want it to be a certain thinness in your pocket, then it probably doesn’t.
First reaction was like that comic with the duck that saws Aww Yiss (alternately, I remembered it cuz I found a case design with it here http://www.zazzle.com/iphone5+cases)
But immediately it switched to… “Fuuuuuuuuu its not the same size”
Context: I have many cases for different occasions (kinda like shoes).
Anyway, WTS iphone4 cases 
I agree.
This post says almost everything I wanted to say about iPhones, but unintentionally.
I won’t be switching from Android. I’m not an Android fanboy, just hate walled gardens. Frankly, Apple’s weirdly overdesigned, functionally-restricted approach seems awful to me, but some people seem to lose their minds and start pelting Apple with gobs of money whenever they release a revised version of one of their products. I guess I just don’t get the appeal.
Do you seriously think that $200 is gobs of money?