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ddon

may be less than people expected, but still very impressive list of improvements:

- 20% lighter than the previous model

- a little larger display

- A6 processor

- camera with a better low-light performance

- 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4GHz, dual channel 5GHz, just like in the Kindle Fire HD

- 4G LTE networks support (around the world)

- HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA (improvements to the existing 3G technology)

and, looks like more news to come...

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Some good improvements, but it's definitely a resounding "meh" from me. I'm not sure why. The first iPhone was, obviously, mindblowing. Retina on the iPhone 4 was similarly amazing.

But I can't think of a single thing we're seeing today that we haven't seen already.

You haven't seen a unibody phone anywhere. This thing will be a tank.

The processors look nice and beefy as well.

Well, technically there are unibody phones... ie. Nokia Lumia 800

and with much better specs particularly in camera department.

As andrewmunsell said, the Nokia phones are unibody, including the new 940. Though I don't expect to get one, a Nokia WP8 actually does seem quite innovative. WP8's UI, camera features, unibody design, offline maps... well, it's interesting at least.

Don't forget the actual Nokia N9, after which the Lumias were made. Same unibody, solid Linux/MeeGo experience. The amazing is that I can impress anyone with it, while an iPhone is such a common view that is becoming the next "xerox" or "velcro".

My HTC One S is a unibody.

I have one too. That clippable top part totally ruins anything else they did to the body for me. It falls off if I even drop the phone lightly on the desk.

I picked up an HTC One S yesterday, since my previous droid was stolen. This phone is a tank. Compared to my previous, Galaxy S 4G, it's solid as a rock.

What would you have liked to see?

I don't know. I realise that sounds like a total cop-out answer, but I had no idea I wanted the features of the first iPhone until I saw it. I never realised I wanted a retina display until it was demoed.

One specific piece of tech I can think of- I do wish Apple had done something with NFC. I agree that it's a joke right now, but that's the point- they could have made something earth-shatteringly brilliant that people would actually use.

Well, NFC is not a joke. It's just not been widely adopted...yet. I use it everyday to initiate pairing between my nokia phone and nokia play 360 speakers without any problem.

Airdrop support.

This has been the resounding response to almost every iPhone revision. And every iPod announcement. They've been losing their magic touch in forums everywhere since their stock was under $50.

iterative, my friend. apple has lost its touch on innovation, imho.

Iteration and innovation each have their places.

Innovation works best when the existing alternatives are awful. I'm not sure why one would "innovate" against their successful formula.

Individual features might be innovative, however. For example, the re-arrangement of photo processing tasks to produce better low-light photos.

http://live.arstechnica.com/apple-september-2012-event-its-a...

Yes, because every iPod they released was a revolution with tons of innovations compared to the previous year's, right?. Just like every Mac?

Iteration is how Apple plays it, and they play it well.

Although I agree with your broader point, the iPod actually seems like a terrible example to me. They did innovate a ton- the mini, the nano, thin nano, fat nano, square nano, chewing gum shuffle, square shuffle...

True, true. My thoughts were along the line of the Classic - from year to year they didn't innovate much along that one line, but you're 100% correct they innovated to fill more niches with new lines.

You have to be pretty innovative with chip design to make processors that double the performance over the previous model.

You have to be pretty innovative with hardware design to reduce the weight of a phone that's already compact by 20%.

I don't think they lost their touch at all.

I think we need to wait for some real benchmarks and not just Apple's sales department's numbers to find out the real performance of the new processor.

Do you really believe Android manufacturers use fundamentally different chips? Most of Apple chips are designed and manufactured by other companies, including the CPU.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Apple's Ax processors are manufactured by other companies (mostly Samsung) but they're designed by Apple, in-house. They started doing so after the acquisition of PWRficient.

They are indeed different from the CPUs used by other smartphone manufacturers.

Remember that it's another ARM based SOC; as a percentage of gates it would surprise me if Apple's input was more than a percent.

I also suspect that most of the speed and power gains come from process improvements.

Of course, Apple "designs" the exact same Cortex-A9 and PowerVR cores as everyone else. (I'll give them some credit if they are first with A15.) Qualcomm is arguably more innovative given that Krait, Adreno, and the baseband are all in-house.

I'm sorry you are so brainwashed by Apple marketing. Apple's Ax line is using reference ARM designs, with negligible modifications.

Manufactured? Yes. Designed? No. Of course, their processors are ARM based, but that doesn't mean that they just stick a reference design in there and hope for the best. A lot of work goes into the design and Apple bought P.A. Semi and Intrinsity and acquired a 9.5% stake in Imagination Technologies, the folks behind PowerVR for that very purpose. Blithely declaring that Apple don't design their chips is somewhat wide of the mark.

I don't know how these acquisitions are relevant at all given that all dissections of A-series chips revealed reference ARM Cortex designs underneath. At best Apple design packaging of these chips, but that's 1% of work.

Your just outright wrong. All of the companies that design SoC's put a heck of a lot of work into the design of the chip. Saying that it's mere packaging is simple mindedness at it's best.

lol

Yes, one of the hallmark traits of Apple and one of the reasons why I still sometimes can love them. A company that is willing to perfect their products, that doesn't go for new for the sake of new, that's really rare.

I hate many of their decisions, many of their views, but I think they always had and still have the right mix of iteration and innovation.

The innovation/iteration process of Apple is often misinterpreted. Apple has had a clear line in this for a long time:

- The main innovation is done to create new products: iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Such products are a result of years of research and development. When Apple releases the product, they make sure the core usability philosophy is sound and does not need to be changed afterwards. - After a product and the surrounding concepts are released, Apple is very conscious not to depart to far from the original concepts and philosophies surrounding that product group. This creates trust and customer loyalty that more "innovative" brands would pay dearly for.

This, in my opinion, has been an oft-overlooked factor in Apple's success.

But worth $200 and lock-in for 2 more years? Probably not for me. My ATT contract I got with the iPhone 4 just expired. The iPhone 5 specs don't make me want to fork out the cash and get locked into another 2 year contract. I'll wait to see what Android devices do in the next few months.

I prefer just to buy the phone cash and go with a regular monthly contract.

"impressive list of improvements" if you lived in 2010.

Nokia Lumia 920 beats iPhone 5 in pretty much every spec.

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