Particularly new smartphones by Apple - have become a little bit like blockbuster movies. There are rumours and speculation well in advance, followed by hype closer to the opening day, then queues around the block to be among the first to experience them. And, like blockbuster movies, they're more or less critic-proof; a significant proportion of the potential customers have decided well in advance whether or not to make a purchase, and there's little any reviewer can say that will alter that.
With that in mind, I've spent a little over a week with an iPhone 5, deciding not so much whether you should buy one (you have a pretty good idea already, let's be honest) but whether I should have. This was no freebie or review loaner - I paid for it with my own money. It had better be worth it.
Sizing up (and down)
The iPhone 5 is really noticeably lighter than the iPhone 4S, which now belongs to my wife. Not only is it thinner, but the replacement of stainless steel and some of the glass with anodised aluminium makes a massive difference to how it feels. Not flimsy, like some of the Android-based phones out there with plastic backs, but very light.
After a few days the sensation of lightness subsided as I got used to the weight. Now the 4S feels bulky in my hand - maybe not quite the effect Apple was hoping for.
It's also about 9mm longer than the iPhone 4S, making room for another 176 rows of pixels on the screen. This has been the subject of much internet humour -
Obi-Wan Kenobi with the incredibly long iPhone 20, for example - but the reality is it's not that big a difference. Videos look better (particularly in apps such as the ABC's iView which have been updated to use the new screen size) because they fit better in the 16:9 proportions of the screen, and you get an extra row of app icons - handy for me, since I've got a handful of "second string" apps that can finally all fit on one page.
Apps that haven't been updated run at their usual size - the screen is the same width as before, so it just fills in black bars top and bottom to display non-optimised content. This can take a bit of getting used to. For example, the on-screen keyboard in a note-taking app might be a few millimetres higher than you expect, or the steering controls in a game like Reckless Racing are a bit further from the edges of the device than you're used to. That's taking me some adjustment - by the time I'm used to it there will no doubt be an update that puts the controls back where they ought to be. Such is life.
The wider screen does make taking video a much more pleasant experience. One of the weirder quirks of the iPhone 4S was that it could record video in 16:9 widescreen, but not display it without letterboxing. While recording, it would default to a zoomed view, so you couldn't actually see the edges of what you were recording without double-tapping to zoom out. With the iPhone 5, you see what you'll get.
The rear-facing camera on the iPhone 5 is better than its predecessor, but not dramatically so. In my testing it did better in low-light than the iPhone 4S, but I've read other reviewers say the exact opposite. Such is subjectivity with these things.
One thing worth noting is that the sapphire coating on the camera lens - which makes it more resistant to scratches - can produce a bluish-purple halo effect if you shoot directly at a bright light source. It's easy enough to avoid, but if you like lens-flare this isn't the camera for you.
The big camera improvement on the iPhone 5 is the front-facing one, which is now capable of 720p video and can take a decent still, without the noise that marred earlier iPhones' front-facing camera efforts. The main beneficiaries of this will be people who use FaceTime a lot - or, more specifically, the people they call will benefit because they'll be recognisable.
The need for speed
Apple has upgraded the processor in the iPhone 5 to what it calls the A6 processor, and what ARM calls the A15 (or at least it's a custom version of the A15). It's a 1.3GHz dual-core processor with a 266MHz tri-core graphics processor built in. Techno-babble aside, it's a very fast processor. Faster than what was in most desktop computers not all that long ago. In a phone.
Of course iPhone users don't generally worry about such specs - that's for Android users.
What it means in practice is that apps launch more quickly, you switch between apps more quickly, and operations like searching your mail or adding a filter to a photo happen more quickly. You're unlikely to do the kind of complex number-crunching or large-scale database searching that would show the true benefits of this extra speed on your phone - but it's there if you need it. Expect some nifty games to come along and show it off. (I still play Reckless Racing, so I'll probably never take full advantage of it myself.)
Where speed does matter with a smartphone is in its ability to use the fastest possible network connections, and here is where the iPhone 5 is a big improvement on its predecessors. It's the first iOS device that can use the 4G/LTE networks available in Australia. Remember when Apple got a smack on the wrist for selling a "4G" iPad that couldn't use 4G here? Lesson learned.
I've tested the iPhone 5 on Telstra's LTE network in various places around the Sydney CBD and the Inner West, and I'm mightily impressed. At one point I managed 41.63 megabits per second downstream and 22.12 megabits per second upstream, according to the speedtest.net app - that's significantly faster than my WiFi network at home (connected to Telstra Cable), and it's not atypical. No more adjusting my expectations for mobile data use to feel less responsive than WiFi; now WiFi feels slow.
Of course as more people buy 4G-capable devices the network will get more crowded and it will slow down a bit. Until then it's a bonanza.
The problem with the bonanza is that, for the first time in some years, I'm getting close to exceeding the data allowance on my iPhone plan. It seems absurd - why would you download more data than usual just because it's faster? Well, think about this: in the past, when an email arrived with an image attached, I would not bother to open it if it wasn't urgent - now I do. FaceTime video calls work over the mobile networks now - great, but data-hungry. Apps like iView, which adapt video streaming quality to suit network conditions, can go full-bore down LTE where they trickle over 3G.
I've only had a 4G-capable device for a bit over a week, but old habits of deciding which activities are not suited to mobile data have slipped away already. I suspect when my bill arrives they may return.
It's not just my data allowance that's being eaten more rapidly by LTE either. Battery life is an issue.
It's always a bit iffy to look at reviewers' perceptions of battery life in a new device, particularly the first few days after it comes out. Quite simply, we spend the first few days with the new toy playing with every new feature like it's Christmas, and the battery takes a hammering. Or, we very carefully examine battery life under strictly controlled conditions (eg watching movies in Airplane Mode, etc) which don't really mean anything in real life.
In the week or so I've been using this phone, I've had days when I've used it in exactly the same manner as my 4S before it, so I know: battery life is about the same. Apple probably could have extended the battery life; the processor is physically smaller and draws less power than the battery in the 4S, so the opportunity for longer battery life was there. Instead Apple chose a slimmer phone that could do more stuff. Then there's 4G.
On a ferry ride from Circular Quay, I used my iPhone 5 to screen-share with my iMac at home using a program called iTeleport. Usually over 3G this is not something you do for longer than necessary. Over LTE it was terrifically responsive, so I spent a good half-hour setting up downloads for when I got home, and so on. In that time my battery went from 78% to 33%. Almost half of the battery, wiped out in one intensive data session. That's not good.
Granted, I could have taken steps to improve that. I had left Bluetooth and WiFi on, despite not being connected to either of those services. Switching them off would have preserved battery life - but that's not how I normally use my phone. I leave Bluetooth turned on so that when I get in the car my phone connects automatically. I leave WiFi on so it glows onto my home network as soon as I'm in range. That's normal usage for me and, I'd warrant, quite a few others.
Which brings me to Lightning
Apple has replaced the familiar Dock connector that has graced iPhones and for the past five years (and iPods for four years before that) with a smaller, reversible connector called Lightning. Unlike the old connector's 30 dedicated pins, Lightning has only eight pins, which can adapt to perform whatever function a particular accessory requires of them. It's small, smart and elegant. And extremely annoying.
You see, over the course of a few years, I've ended up with quite a few of those old 30-pin cables about the place, not to mention accessories like my TomTom cradle in the car that incorporate the 30-pin connector. None of them can plug in to the iPhone 5. If I found my iPhone 4S running low on charge, I've not been more than a few steps away from a suitable charging point just about anywhere in my house. All of a sudden, that was reduced to the one cable that came with the phone, and I've been carrying it about with me. I bought a second cable, but that took a week - supplies have been limited.
There's also an adapter that will allow some - not all - accessories with 30-pin connectors to plug into iPhone 5 and future Lightning-equipped devices, but that adapter is even more scarce. I've not seen one yet. I do know it's quite large for an adapter (it includes some electronic smarts of its own) and I can imagine an iPhone 5, plugged into the adapter, plugged into an accessory with a 30-pin Dock, looking rather top-heavy. I assume Jony Ive (Apple's top industrial designer) has done the maths to ensure people aren't going to be snapping their old connectors.
Of course my TomTom cradle is useless now, regardless of any adapter, because the iPhone 5 won't fit in it. TomTom has made no announcement regarding an updated version. For that matter, the announcements of any third-party support for Lightning have been extremely limited. It will come, of course - the iPhone 5 is a blockbuster, and everyone wants a piece of that action - but it surprises me that Apple didn't have a range of accessories (aside from high-end audio gear) ready to announce at launch.
Apple could have switched from the proprietary 30-pin connector to micro-USB, which is much smaller and is becoming the standard on non-Apple smartphones. It wouldn't have been as clever as Lightning - there would have been no way to support the "iPod-out" feature used by some in-car systems, for example - and it wouldn't have been reversible, but there would have been a tonne of accessories, chargers and more already out there ready to go. (And since no in-car system has yet been announced that supports iPod-out over Lightning, it's a wash anyway.)
We did it our way
I fear that Lightning is a symptom of the "not-invented-here" (NIH) mentality that gripped Apple in the 1990s, when it held on to things like ADB and Apple Serial connectors whose benefits over the industry-standard equivalents of the time were marginal at best. When the 30-pin Dock connector was introduced, there was not an alternative that could do all Apple wanted with it - I'm not sure that's the case now, and I'm not sure that Lightning is so much better than micro-USB that it makes up for the frustration it will cause during the transition.
Speaking of frustration, it would be remiss of me not to mention that of course the iPhone 5 comes equipped with iOS 6 and its new Maps application, developed in-house by Apple with help from TomTom. If ever there were a sign of a company abandoning a widely-used standard product in favour of an inferior one on the basis of NIH, it's Maps. Maps will get better, of course - Google Maps wasn't great at first either - but right now it's very limited indeed.
If Apple is succumbing to another case of NIH, it had better shake it off, and quick.
Conclusion
The iPhone 5 is not a revolution in the way the original iPhone was back in 2007. Back then there were no phones that looked like iPhones - now they pretty much all do, as at least one jury has attested. The iPhone 5 is no exception - it looks very much like an iPhone. Like a good blockbuster sequel, though, the iPhone 5 offers some new ideas and variations on the themes of its predecessors, while still remaining solidly grounded as part of the series. A Star-Trek-style "reboot" is not needed at this stage.
Had I known before the iPhone 5 came out how hard it would be to find Lightning cables, and how long it would be before any kind of accessory ecosystem supporting the new connector would appear, I might have held off. If you're the owner of a Dock-equipped audio system, I'd suggest holding off the iPhone 5 until you see how well that adapter works. Call me a pessimistic Star Wars fan, but I have a bad feeling about that.
Lightning holds great promise, but so far it's been a source of frustration for me.
If you got an iPhone 4S last year, the iPhone 5 offers little reason to abandon it yet. It's better, but not dramatically so. If you're still using an iPhone 3GS or even an iPhone 4, though, the iPhone 5 offers enough improvements in enough places that it warrants serious consideration.
