The iPhone 5
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
To summarize the 'review'
0. Glass was the best material for the phone till last week. Now it's aluminium. Plastic sucks because it scuffs instead of breaking but feels cheap so I hate it. Why doesn't everyone else use an inferior material that Apple just stopped using?
1. The bigger screen sucks. But after using it for a week, the old screen is too small. 3.5" was perfect till now. 4" is perfect hereon. Anything bigger is only for stupid people who have and use two hands. And if they have two sizes, stupid people will always choose the bigger one - it's better that apple decides the right size for me.
2. The display is brighter and more saturated than the 4S. But not AS bright or saturated as the S3. It's just perfect, because its from Apple. Oh wait - the display is from LG. It's got a lower resolution than the S3? Crispness is what matters.
3. The Camera is good.
4. AT&T sucks. Verizon rocks. Oh you can't do data+voice simultaneously on Verizon. But who needs that?
5. Battery life is same as on 4S. Who needs more than that?
6. The benchmark score of the processor is the highest Apple has so far. The S3 beats the pants off the iPhone 5? That's not a phone is it?
7. iOS6? There's nothing to talk about. I mean they screwed up the Maps. They copied notifications last time so there's nothing left to copy.
HN is about founders and the IT industry. mobile technology is the biggest growth area right now. Apple and Google are dominating, with different concepts software and hardware wise. Samsung is in there as a hybrid with many different approaches, incl. WP8 which is Nokia's and Microsoft's stake. RIM is practically dead in the water.
Instead of going full nerd retard, shouldn't you be keen on understanding what is going on? Why Apple is breaking records? Why, as Gruber notes in his review, there is a target group very attracted to Samsung (or just bigger form factors)?
Imagine you're in the automotive industry, producing accessories for various brands. wouldn't you approach customers driving a BMW differently than the ones driving a Lexus? There might be hostility and sneering between those groups, but what does it matter to you?
It feels like the horrible mindset of sports fans, just within nerd circles. My team is better than yours, even though I just sit on the sidelines and have no impact on the actual play. Cause there is nothing else in my life to get excited about.
I mean really. What is actually new? Very little is the answer.
Apple have bumped up the specs... everyone does after a year or two. That is really about it. Its a hardware upgrade. Well. A hardware upgrade with a new adapter... because that is exactly what the world needed. Fuck standardization. Realistically Apple wanted to milk more money from people. You have no choice but to get an adapter, otherwise all your docks and peripherals will no longer connect to your iPhone. YES! GET THE IPHONE5!
> The question everyone who hasn’t yet pre-ordered wants answered: Should you upgrade? My answer is simple. If you can afford it, yes.
Your answer is wrong. If your phone function's fine, you have no complaints with its responsiveness etc. No you do not need to upgrade. The iPhone5 brings nothing which is compellingly new to the table. It is a minor update. A bit like a new XBOX. Does exactly the same stuff as your current xbox, looks slightly better, loads games slightly faster.
If your iPhone breaks, hell, check out the iPhone5. If you don't have an iPhone and can justify the cost look into it. Otherwise buy a cheap android handset which - while rougher around the edges - has all the same phone functionality (You are buying a phone) for a fraction of the cost.
No, they wanted to make the phone thinner and lighter. They gained 20% with an adapter that's 80% smaller.
My guess is that the Lightning adapter will be, at minimum, USB 3.0 speeds, if not better. It's also entirely digital, meaning the adapters have to have DACs in them to output analog, hence the price.
I wonder why each iteration of the iPhone has to be science fiction?
this is one side of the argument, represents a demographic and target group. no need to invest in luxury for your products, focus on utilitarian approach. can be rough around the edges, but needs to get the job done.
but what about BMW buyers? why is BMW selling like hotcakes? is it just about the marketing? all an illusion? just like with a mobile device, you need to try it to find out. Gruber calls it "niceness", which is a pretty good term. Attention to detail, materials, the composition of it all. No rough edges. Apple is showing of the micron-precision manufacturing in their latest iPhone video. Why does a phone need that? BMW does the same, visit BMW world in Munich to get a grasp of it.
There is a target group that responds to level of detail. Even superfluous one, think of classic traits attributed to Japanese handiwork or cooking. Does sushi need to look that good? Does a wooden temple need such intricate structures?
No surprise that Jobs' was infatuated with Japan and Sony.
Do specs and factsheets appeal to everyone? Obviously not. BMW exist. Apple as well. Both can be described as overpriced, overhyped items of self-indulgence that are being surpassed by a lot of competing products. But that 'surpassed' is subjective. Once you add taste and design into the mix, it becomes a very different picture.
Now think of your target group. Is your own taste a good indicator or does it cloud what your users would actually like?
If you want to understand why other people do things, you have to first stop thinking about why you do things.
Wrong analogy - these two brands have very high resale values. For every non-BMW Prius-class vehicle there are 10+ Ford Focus (gets job done, but loses resale fast).
- processor
- baseband
- antennas
- camera
- display
- case
- OS
- and, yes, the Lightning adaptor which you baselessly claim Apple instituted just to milk money from people
A great deal of iPhone 5 is entirely new. Yes, it is a hardware upgrade, but you're simply being disingenuous if you claim very little is new.
I'd also like to point out that "free" is a very affordable price for an iPhone 4, for those who are looking for a cheap handset.
The iphone 5 is a fine phone IMO, even thus they failed to advertise it as such, use a crappy new connector and "forgot" about NFC.
The screen looks good, the CPU looks excellent, its finally lighter, it also finally has LTE, and the rest, well, is mostly on par with rest anyways.
I like to think of Apple and Google as different "eigenvectors" for building a big, profitable company. Apple represents one extreme -- closed, premium, vertically integrated, resulting in highest profits but lower marketshare. Google is almost the opposite -- open, ad-supported, trying to get its search box and ads onto everything, resulting in highest market share but lower profits.
Being able to pick pieces from each approach for your own company is the real lesson here.
And for me, personally, I could get excited working at either Apple or Google -- just like it's interesting to play chess on either the white or black side. My goal is to understand the game!
What I really didn't like was the vapidness and hypocrisy of Gruber's review. Gruber's talking as if this is the second coming - when in reality this is a good evolutionary upgrade.
BTW - I bought a first gen iPod/iPad, have owned 3 Apple notebooks, and have made a dozen or so people buy Apple computers and iPhones. I have no hesitation recommending an Apple product to those it would be best suited for.
Same thing with the unibody MacBooks, to say nothing of the Air. Had a MacBook and a much less expensive PC laptop from the same generation in the house; I'm still loving the MacBook, while the PC is long forgotten.
Even bigger effect with the iPhone. That one looked impressive from the start, but it made a world of a difference to actually hold one in your hand.
The iPhone 4 had the Retina display, and so that time the nerds were actually salivating over it, because the higher resolution could finally be expressed as a number and put in a chart. Nah, just kidding, the nerds were adamant that nobody needed that many pixels anyway, and preferred to argue about the "Retina" monicker. As for myself: waited until I saw it in person, was blown away again.
I'm not going to buy an iPhone 5. My iPhone 4 is still serving me fine. But from past experience, I know that the only good way to evaluate an iPhone is to actually hold it in your hand and use it. That's why I'm more interested in the impressions of a Gruber holding an iPhone 5 than in those of a bean-counter holding an iPhone 5 data sheet.
PS: just a small concession to the specs game: are you sure "the S3 beats the pants off the iPhone 5"? If you do a google search, you'll find as many people saying the 5 beats the S3 as those who say the opposite. Geekbench scores for the S3 are all over the place (check the browser). Then there's the question of whether most apps can scale to a 4-core processor as well as Geekbench does. And then there's the fact that the iPhone 4 performed much better in practice than higher-clocked Android phones of the same era. I'm sure Android has gotten "snappier" since then, but we should have learned a few lessons by now.
On paper the SIII blows the Nexus out of the water, but after using both for 2+ weeks, the SIII feels like shit to me, compared to the Nexus. It may just be because the Nexus is on Jelly Bean, and the SIII is (embarrassingly) still on ICS, or maybe its Samsung's TouchWiz that slows the phone down.
So I definitely agree with you; my anecdote matches your experience. But I'd still say the iPhone should be compared to the Nexus, rather than the SIII.
I had a first gen iPod, iPad, a Powerbook G4, a Macbook, and now a Macbook Pro. I LOVE Apple products, and am in no way disparaging the absolute impact they've had on the rest of the industry. I've influenced a dozen people to go Apple, and told many others that the right phone for them was an iPhone, and not an Android.
But reading Gruber's syrupy review, when the iPhone 5 is just not as 'revolutionary' as it's made out to be, and as if other phones which do better on specs, size, battery life, LTE, don't exist was just a bit too much.
Gruber's 'review' doesn't belong on HN.
Of course, since Android has multi-tasking, at least the OS can take advantage of the cores that the front-end app can't.
Android is definitely not as 'snappy' as iOS. But JB is a LOT 'snappier' even on my single-core Nexus S.
I readily take your point - Apple's iPod, iPhone, iPad were magical when they came out. And they continued that with iPhone 4S, iPad3 displays.
But their competition has not stood still. The improvements in the iPhone 5 are not 'revolutionary' - there's nothing there that's pushing the envelope - 'merely' incremental improvements. Not that it's bad, but it's hyped way over what it is.
Oh wait, that's Android 4.0.4. My bad. Here's with Android 4.1.1: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/1045167
You're right about multi-tasking, but single-task performance is still important for many apps. Assuming Geekbench scales linearly, the S3's single-task performance would be about half the iPhone 5's.
[Remember this golden scroll?](http://dcurt.is/3-point-5-inches) Yes, that article that began the mass religious revelation that revealed why iPhone 4S is 3.5 inch big, while the other Android phone, Galaxy S II is not as user-friendly it's too big.
Since Apple's bigger screen creates discrepancy between his reasoning and the reality, he is now trying to prove why he was not wrong a year ago.
>Such people surely think the iPhone 5’s display remains too small. But, trust me, there are going to be many long-time iPhone users complaining that it’s too big after they upgrade.
But what about millions of other who are happier with bigger screen? What about the possibly larger return on convenience and usability who genuinely prefer larger screen? None is spoken of.
A less negative way to parse what he wrote is: "Previous iPhone users who are upgrading to iPhone 5 will feel the screen is too big, but they'll get used to it."
That's almost certainly going to be true. I fully expect to feel iPhone 5's display is too large. I also expect I'll get used to it and will eventually feel the 4's screen is too small if I ever move back. Furthermore, he ends that section with this paragraph:
But if Apple offered me an otherwise identical iPhone 5 with a 3.5-inch 3:2 display, which one would I choose? Last week, in the first few days of use, I’d have chosen the 3.5-inch one. Now, though, one week in, I’m not so sure. My trusty old iPhone 4S feels better to use for tapping those back buttons and the status bar, but, it really is starting to look squat to my eyes. Give me another week and I suspect I won’t look back.
"I suspect I won't look back." Sounds like he agrees that the larger screen is ultimately a step forward.
What's the difference between the SG3 and the SG2? Slightly bigger, slightly different shape, new OS (not that this has anything to do with Samsung), slightly worse camera, slightly bigger battery, blah blah blah...
You can pretty much say the same thing about any device, there is very little "innovation" between device versions. Mostly it's just more of some and less of some in a new case.
In which case any review would be 'a lover on his last moments of love, desperately rationalizing things'.
And the jump from SG2 with 2.3 to SG3 with 4.0 is a night & day improvement.
The miniaturization of electronics is arguably one of the most significant trends of our technological era. Many of the great science fiction writers of the 50s and 60s, despite getting so much right, in large part missed miniaturization. What once filled rooms was reduced in the 80s to what could sit on a desk, and now to what can fit in our pockets. So making a thinner, taller phone is not innovation? Why?
I know that Apple isn't popular around these parts, but let's at least have an intelligent conversation about specifically what we find fault with instead of ranting and rage-upvoting incoherent rants.
He also writes really good essays. Can we please also have more people delivering this kind of medicine?
Look, I agree that Gruber has blinders on sometimes. (I thought his posts today about earPods was blindingly positive until the addendum.) But people seem to react with vitriol more than arguments.
Except that we know from surveys that most HN readers use Apple computers, phones, and tablets. And yet, even here, you can't appreciate feats of design, engineering, and usability without s vocal minority getting amusingly angry.
He spoke of the 'tech crowd' and of how the iPhone 5 is 'nice' which that certain crowd doesn't get.
Make no mistake - I think that the iPhone5 is an impressive piece of technology - as good or better than any other smart phone. But justifying Apple's design choices and changes is a whole other game.
Could you please point out to any factual errors in what I wrote? And I stand by the fact that 'thinner, taller' phone when others have done as thin, and taller is not innovation. Esp when the thinner compromises battery life - which is much more important to most of those with iPhones.
Ant btw, Gruber does criticise Apple sometimes. Those who read what he writes know that.
"The bored-by-the-iPhone tech press/industry experts surely value niceness, but they do not hold it in the same top-tier regard that Apple does. They are not equipped to devote an amount of attention to niceness commensurate with the amount of effort Apple puts into it."
is the fruitiest thing I have read in a while
It's definitely a very "nice" phone. Innovative? Not so much.
29MP cameras taking pictures of parts to match the case? Cool, but 99% of people won't care. I know Jony does. And I have A LOT of respect for that. It's like a $30k Patek Philippe watch - a lot of polishing, precision, care, subtlety, microscopic advancements - but most buy it because of the name; the brand.
Gruber's reviews are very Apple influenced. I wonder how much cash they're giving this guy. I remember reading one of his posts where Phil Schiller met him in a hotel room to intro Mountain Lion, how perfect the presentation and the conversation was. Clearly a very pro-Apple journalist (blogger? reviewer?) There's nothing wrong with this but his iPhone 5 post is pure "this is the best iPhone yet"
Anyway - nice phone, best iPhone? Sure, why not. It's the "biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone" That kind of says it out. We're out of ideas here, thinner, smaller, lighter, different materials - whatever.
I don't remember where I read it but I remember reading a piece that mentioned a few very wise things: smartphones will become so standardized in the next few years that we won't even notice what it is we are using. After all, we can't really go much thinner and lighter, we're reaching an apex here. Smaller? Not happening. People have hands that are a certain size. Smartphones will be replaced by something - be it Google Glass, foldable displays, chips in our brains (can't wait for this one! haha) --- the bottom line is that we're reaching levels of engineering where we just can't go much farther.
In Apple's case, I think you're putting the cart before the horse. The brand surely is created by that precision, care and subtlety.
"Apple has added ZERO product innovation this time in software or hardware."
This is just exposing your ignorance and bias. In hardware alone this phone:
(1) has the best SoC available;
(2) has a solid unibody metal construction but weighs less than creaky plastic phones;
(3) pairs world class thinness with world class battery life (according to Engadget);
(4) has a camera that's only beaten by the nokia 808 pureview;
(5) supports beamforming, something almost no other high end phone does;
(6) supports HD audio, another something almost no other high end phone does;
(7) has a full sRGB screen, something we've only seen in mobile from in iPad 3 and ???;
(8) probably has the best included headphones of any phone.
Well. Unless you count Nokias and SGS3... Also it won't be available in USA, which I guess is its primary market.
US model does not support. Imagine how bad people would freak if Apple shipped a significantly higher spec phone to China and the shitty version for the US.
I stand corrected on Nokias though. I had thought the new EVO was the first phone in the US with it but it looks like Nokia's whole range has it.
I hope at least the competitors will come up with truly novel ideas. Hardware improvements are more than expected from every manufacturer as time goes. But no one can predict innovation.
You're mistaken, there's a good deal of overlap between improvement and innovation. Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb (nor did Swan the only other person remembered in connection to it). Edison's actual technical innovations for the light bulb boiled down to more efficient materials (higher resistance, longer lasting) and more exacting industrial standards (better evacuation). He also had a better ecosystem.
The "revolutioniphone revolution occurred at the precise time that a large number incrementally improving technologies -- processors, batteries, flash memory, screens, capacitive touchscreen, multitouch language library -- first allowed you to build something like the iphone at a consumer price.
Yes sometimes improvements are just improvements. But sometimes improvements lead to a new level of viability for consumers. Miniturization matters when you hit certain levels. A clock you can put in your pocket was one such level, the next was the pocketwatch small enough to put on your wrist. Incrementally better hardware and software has by many accounts erased Android's lag deficit. Lag still exists for all devices of all OS's but the key step is the one that takes you over a certain level of perception and if you look at early iOS they employed all sort of hacks and tricks to help erase the perception of lag. If you're making an audio product CD quality is one such plateau that matters. Audiophile quality may be the next major one. Similarly for tiny computers console quality graphics is an important improvement.
To summarize your "comment"
0. I was really just skim reading the post because I already had my mind made up before I even read it.
1. I also reinterpreted long passages of Gruber discussing his personal experiences as polemic arguments in defense of Apple.
2. And threw in irrelevant comparisons to the Samsung S3 and phrased them as if Gruber mentioned the product a single time in the entire post.
3. I knew all along the other Android fanboys and Apple haters would upvote me for this so I didn't really try that hard to say anything insightful.
Instead I got a mind-warping justification of why 4" is now great, glass vs aluminum, no mention of the Lightning plug, no mention of iOS6.
If you look at Gruber's article, you'll find that few if any of what he's talking about have major impacts on your daily usage of the phone, and what's great about the iPhone5 have been done before (screen, non-glass, display, LTE, battery life, CPU perf) - but he spins it as if Apple's doing that for the first time in the universe.
BTW, I am an Apple fan - first gen iPad/iPod, 3 Apple laptops, and a dozen people buying Apple prods because of me.
This was NOT a pro-Android, anti-Apple comment - it was an anti-Gruber spin-fluff piece comment.
Did we read the same article? Gruber clearly seemed to think it was more unwieldy to use and spent a lot of time weighing tradeoffs on that issue. His conclusion seemed to be little more than his resignation to get used to the iPhone 5's 4" screen. I think you're expecting Gruber to be a loyal apologist, so you're a little thrown for a loop when he seems a little unsure about the merits of Apple's decisions.
He does spend the 750 words raving about the industrial design of the phone. The lede is that the iPhone 5 is "nice", not that it's a technological breakthrough (other than the manufacturing processes at least). It's clear that that's where Apple focused their innovation for this cycle. If you're only looking for technical specs and you're blind to this sort of thing, don't be surprised when other people interpret you as an Apple hater. To be perfectly honest, the fact that you now come out claiming to be an Apple fan indicates more than anything that you were trolling the whole time.
The primary reason I switched was that one day, I opened up my home screen and realized it hasn't changed in 5 years. We still open apps one at a time, each app allotted a sort of pseudo background API that allows minimal functionality. And God those apps are pretty. And the FPS is amazing. And the fluidity of the experience is breathtaking... but at the end of the day, my device is about acquiring information. I want to know when my train is coming, I want to save map info when I don't have a connection, I want to know that when I leave for work and hit the subway, Pocket auto downloaded all those articles I saved for later.
Apple still maintains the best hardware, hands down. It's not even comparable. But it's irrelevant if the apps that reside on that phone are completely crippled by a draconian sense of design and control. If the phone has a "workstation tower processor" inside it, why the hell can't they let up and let the thing actually PROCESS more information?
I'll miss the beauty of it, that's for sure, but unless Apple gets its act together with background processing and figuring out how to actually do cloud anything right, I'm moving to Google.
Good point, I have no idea why don't they just push to iOS devices on my account.
Because of power. It may have "workstation tower processing" power, but it's not hooked up to a wall socket. Power consumption is the gigantic bugaboo that plagues mobile devices, and that (in my opinion) justifies Apple's policies about background processing on iOS.
An iPhone that's smaller than my still-pocketable non-Apple phone isn't that appealing to me (yay for having above-average-sized hands!). An iPhone that could go a week easily on a single charge would make me sit up and take notice, though.
It's truly just an incredibly hard problem to solve.
All of us have experienced how much you want to tear your hair out over lag (especially in iTunes). I think iOS eases that experience because there only is so much you can do at once and you always feel like you're in control in an environment that Apple actually controls.
There's no reason you shouldn't have the full uncrippled power of UNIX in the palm of your hand.
I couldn't stop laughing when I read this. There's probably a few reasons I can think of.
Every time I'm up to get a new phone I come this close to switching to iPhone. My wife has one, and I've switched to Macs. But there are certain utilitarian functions that keep me on Android.
As of the last two design revs, though, I also have an aesthetic aversion to the iPhone. Gruber describes the jewelry or fine watch-like quality very well. But I don't wear jewelry or fine watches. (Ok, I wear a wedding ring, but it's a plain band.)
Maybe I'm just a philistine, but there's something about old original Motorola Droids that are at this point beaten up and worn that have a really nice aged, aesthetic weight to them.
It's a sentiment similar to the one Khoi Vinh lays out here: http://www.subtraction.com/2007/07/16/designed-det but not quite, because I think smart phones become obsolete too quickly for 'designed deterioration' to be realistic.
Maybe it's more that I don't want to feel that precious about these objects. I like to be able to not have to worry that much about taking care of my phone, to be able to toss it around without worrying about damage.
Or maybe it's just an emotional, class-based aversion to luxury goods because I grew up in working class conditions.
But marketing the iPhone as a luxury status symbol could be a little dangerous for them since they really only make one flagship phone. Even here in Vietnam I see iPhones all over the place and it just isn't a very effective signal of wealth anymore. But when I pull out my S3 people always want to look at it and play with it.
I hope he sends you rates on par with London, NYC, or SF. ;)
There are many well designed and built items which people would own and use even if no one sees them using or knows they own it. For me, Apple products fit into this category.
You do see iPhones everywhere though, but when they still cost a good 2-3 months salary for most of the people here, it can only be a signifier of wealth, afaic. I think people still view it as the "right" pair of jeans versus Android's kind of cheap impression.
But that's just my observation, I'm probably wrong.
Edit: Also, if you're in Saigon, we should grab a coffee or something. jon@interfacelab.com
And just to be clear, not a douche, just a touch on the asshole side. I've never worn an Affliction shirt in my life.
(sigh) The life of a new yorker, nobody gets us.
>Gruber describes the jewelry or fine watch-like quality very well. But I don't wear jewelry or fine watches.
Being like jewelry isn't jewelry. The reference is to the build quality.
>but there's something about old original Motorola Droids that are at this point beaten up and worn that have a really nice aged, aesthetic weight to them.
No tech device is resistant to get beaten up. This is why there is a very healthy iPhone case market.
>Maybe it's more that I don't want to feel that precious about these objects.
These are phones. They are supposed to serve your purpose and not the other way around.
> Being like jewelry isn't jewelry. The reference is to the build quality.
Build quality of this level is inherently luxurious, IMO.
> No tech device is resistant to get beaten up. This is why there is a very healthy iPhone case market.
I think you missed my point? Which was that I prefer objects that wear well to objects you must protect with cases that sort of defeat the purpose of having something of such high aesthetic quality.
> These are phones. They are supposed to serve your purpose and not the other way around.
I agree. That's why I want a phone I'm not afraid to scratch or dent, or I have to protect with a case (see above).
I don't know what that means. If you're saying that all smartphones at this level are luxurious then why do you care that the term 'jewelry' is being thrown around?
>Which was that I prefer objects that wear well to objects you must protect with cases that sort of defeat the purpose of having something of such high aesthetic quality.
Your point makes less sense to me. When has metal been lees durable than plastic? Metals traditionally dent and plastic cracks. I view the latter as being far worse.
Sorry, I'll try to explain more clearly. I'm saying the build quality of Apple products, especially iPhones, is far higher than that of other phones, and is in that respect inherently luxurious. So luxurious, in fact, that it's only natural to be afraid of damage.
> Your point makes less sense to me. When has metal been lees durable than plastic? Metals traditionally dent and plastic cracks. I view the latter as being far worse.
It's not about the material. It's about what the wear does to the aesthetic quality of the phone. To use a different example, compare a jeep to a BMW. I'm not afraid of aesthetic damage to the jeep, because it's built for that, and built in such a way as to wear the damage well. Not so for the BMW. (Car analogies always work, right?)
I always think of Louis CK when I'm picking up my OG Droid - how amazing this "outdated" technology is in our amazing world. Nothing has convinced me yet that I need more. I've felt 4G and OLED but it doesn't really matter that much. I can't wait 3 more seconds here and there.
Here's my mini review of the Droid 4 and why I didn't upgrade: http://mikebaas.org/writings/Technology/CellPhones/droid_4_r...
I can understand this perspective for the 4 and 4s, as it's made from relatively delicate glass. But this phone, carved from aluminum, should be extremely rugged. The chamfer polish (not the geometry) is ornamental, but beyond that it's a purely functional expression. Apple didn't say, "Hey, Aluminum's pretty, let's make a phone out of it!" An aluminum unibody requires less parts, is more structural, more rugged, highly recyclable, dissipates heat, etc.
Beauty and function are not at odds. Often they are related, especially in nature.
I think, as Windows Phone and (teenagers who continue to use) Blackberry have proven, people have different uses and visions for how they use their phones. Phone makers could do well to listen carefully and offer solutions, rather than follow Apple's design aesthetic and try to beat them at their own minimalism game.
Also online: http://www.cyberport.de/smartphone-und-foto/smartphones/A409...
They also have the white version.
I think you can check online if the phone is available in a specific store at a given time.
Edit: Amazon.de has one for 319€ at the moment: http://amzn.to/S4rtbZ
Last year in Cupertino, I yelled at some people about touchscreens that paid precise attention to finger touches from the user but not to how the device in turn touches the hands of the user (and produces divot edge-lines in the flesh).
Those creases between the antenna bands and the glass back combined with the 4S's weight were very noticeable the first time I held the 4S for more than 5 minutes and through the first week I had it. It faded completely fairly quickly and I laugh about it now but I have to think one of their major goals with this iteration was to erase that defect.
People seem disappointed every time Apple doesn't come out with a total redesign but total redesigns are basically admissions that what you were shipping last week was totally wrong. I have to think that a unibody metal frame is what they've been shooting for all along. They couldn't work the antennae properly so they settled on a lot of plastic and then glass and finally they got their unibody aluminum chassis. I wouldn't be surprised if by next year they completely remove the glass inlays on the back and move to liquidmetal alloys.
Also, why on earth would Apple choose to have apps letterboxed in portrait mode? Wouldn't it make WAY more sense to align them on the bottom of the display, so that the keyboard would at least be in the same place across all applications? Here's hoping developers don't lag on updating their apps.
Because my Japanese iPhone 4S can't do tethering, and iOS maps/navigation is horrible, I just deal with carrying a Galaxy Nexus as well.
The tradeoff is really simple; the iPhone lets you access the whole screen with your thumb, while the Nexus lets you see more usable info with your eyes.
I found that I tended to pull out the Galaxy to read things (articles, this website, etc), even though the screen isn't as high-quality. Just because it is bigger.
With the iPhone 5, it seems Apple traded away the thumb-awesome but just adding 176 pixels to the top doesn't get you much more reading-awesome.
Would you expect the app to then slide to the middle? Or stay aligned-left and make it harder for the right hand?
So what about the Lumia 800 (1)? Or the One S (2)?
1) http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/3/2534861/nokia-lumia-800-re...
2) http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/2/2916098/htc-one-s-review
From the Wikipedia Article: "A trough-colored unibody shell is made from polycarbonate plastic."
And, Gruber had a demo-unit of the Lumia 800:
Still, there's the One S, for... one. And that was just a quick find among the current crop of recommended phones; I wouldn't be surprised if there are others.
There’s also a marketing advantage: few[1] of the competing phones on the market are made of metal.
It makes me feel uncomfortably odd, but the iPhone elicits zero desire from me. If someone gave one to me for free, it would gather dust on my shelf.
And personally, I think that iOS 6 is a disappointment and no one wants to admit it. The hardware is eclipsing the software.
It was actually when I first saw the new feature list for 6 that I began to worry that Apple had lost its momentum and the lackluster iPhone 5 only reinforces that feeling.
The actual explanation is that the iOS6 beta was made available in June, people have been talking about it for 3 months. It's old news (and felt enormously boring during the keynote as we'd already seen pretty much everything they demoed aside from — I believe — panorama). The hardware, on the other hand, is new.
Unfortunately there's a vocal group on here who are willing to just sit and go "Gruber is an Apple shill, there's nothing in here, he makes weird justifications", and he does in places, but he's also given Apple a hard time over changing display size so it's slightly hard to cover the screen but he knows they've had to do that in response to the market.
There's plenty to like in the iPhone 5, and I'll be upgrading my 4 to one when I can because for me Apple is still producing the nicest hardware for a smartphone and that trumps anything else for me. Stop assuming your personal feelings about it are real world facts, because you love the iPhone doesn't make it the best, and because you love the Galaxy doesn't make it the best.
Gruber brought up a very good point about the somewhat less than perfect screen size which shows a UI weakness of iOS: the back button—one of the most used UI elements—is always at the top left. Try it yourself, go to versus io to see the iPhone 5 in its orignal size, calibrate your screen (click at the top-right corner on versus io) and place your hand next to the iPhone and see if your thumb would be able to reach the top-left corner: http://versusio.com/en/apple-iphone-5-64gb-vs-samsung-galaxy... In contrast, Android has hardware back keys always at the bottom, so even 4,8" phones could be used for a short while with one hand (just try the same experiment with the S3). Moreover, there's a huge target not bothering about bigger phones because they have space in their bag and don't put them into their pockets (women). So, I agree with Gruber to start offering two size: 3.5 and something about 4.5 or even larger (and changing the back button UI in the long run).
Gotta love Gruber's continued adherence to succinct style and message. Makes for a great, consumable read.
Still, what I liked the most about the iphone, and the ipad, and the macbook, was how innovative it was. Everything was new. New concepts, new icon, new look and feel.. a whole refreshing new feeling.
I feel like the iphone5 is mostly a simple hardware update. I.e every now and then, I'll switch my old memory for a new one 2x faster. It's not innovative or original.. it's just faster memory.
So, this is why I'm disappointed. Not because the iphone5 is not good (it's great!). It just didn't satisfied my WOW factor.
The mobile revolution has settled already. The next wave will be pervasive computing and/or AR in about 5 years.
I can't help but feel that you're misrepresenting the past. The iPhone has had the same look and feel, icons, and basic design since the very first version released 5 years ago. The iPad UI is very much a scaled up version of that very same look and feel. It seems odd to stop and complain now that the phone is an incremental upgrade.
The iPhone is always going to be a simple hardware upgrade; its entire design is based around making the software front and center.
The only great thing about the new iPhone is the fact that the iOS 6 operating system is comes with has an awesome vector maps feature that blows Google Maps out of the water. I'm not prepared to spend $1000 AUD on buying an iPhone 5 when it doesn't offer anything significantly new, where's the NFC chip?
Samsung and Nokia are popular enough and have the resources to back NFC but as of now they haven't done anything besides launching phones with the technology.
NFC today is just a dummy selling point and they know it, because they haven't done anything to make it popular.
I'm not saying that's the reason why Apple ditched NFC, but maybe we would need an independent study on actual stores which support NFC and consider if whether it's a useless standard. You're gonna carry your wallet anyway to pay in cash, why not put the NFC in the credit card?
Apple is coming to the party one year and nine months late. Have you used Google Maps on an Android device lately?
I'd also point out that Google Maps has a significantly larger database of points of interest than Apple, who is relying upon a TomTom database.
I don't see any reason why the Apple Maps application would "blow Google Maps out of the water." Google's been doing maps for a really long time so a v1.0 release of a maps app from Apple is not going to destroy the behemoth that is Google Maps.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps [2] http://www.cnet.com.au/next-google-maps-has-3d-vector-maps-o...
I do give credit to The Verge in having the best video reviews on any given topic. I find that The Verge can get too verbose in reviews. I don't mean that it contains too many words but much are used in waste.
Macworld didn't get one either, and they're not exactly known for their critical reviews of Apple products: https://twitter.com/jsnell/status/248233492650020864
As another data point, Macworld.com didn't get one either (they have in the past).
Now, I don't hate Apple, behaviour aside. They make great products. But Gruber has nothing new or interesting to say about them. It's just the same old, and is uninteresting. Anyone who feels the need to read what he thinks about Apple can just go to daringfireball; nobody's discovering any great insights here.
In an ideal world, perhaps Apple would offer two iPhone sizes — like they do
with products such as MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, and iMacs. A smaller one with
the classic 3.5-inch display, and a larger (say, 4.5-inch?) one for people who
want that.
And people don't have a choice in size. They have a choice in sie that goes MANDATORY with other specs, such as slower CPU, less advanced OS, less functionality, heavier/thicker device, have they decide to go with smaller screen.
The 4S is likely to be still for sale for two more YEARS. You think Apple just accidentally made a two-year surplus of the 4S, and now they are stuck with them, so they have to keep selling them? The actual figure is probably more like two days than two years.
Not sure how it will feel in regards to the back buttons though that are used pretty extensively with something like the facebook app, that i use quite a lot.
His writing serves little purpose sans as a base for analysis of how the Apple RDF affects basic reasoning.
Of course some of these are available as third-party apps and apis. Some would suck (widgets for one probably). But I don't believe we're anywhere near running out of things to innovate on to make mobile computing worthwhile/suck-less.
Both Android and WP are much better in this regard but there's still a lot of room for improvement.
If you could magically ship something with the iPhone 5, what would it be?
The market is in no way stalling out, but really, the next "obvious" hardware feature isn't so obvious anymore. Putting these in the hands of five billion people is what's next.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6668cxupH98&feature
The fact that nobody at Fox questioned it before the reportage aired is a sign of two things:
1. Fox News isn't the pinnacle of journalism, to put it mildly (seriously, how can the whole team miss the almost over-published iPhone 5 announcement details and instead find a old mockup video?).
2. Technology has come a long long way when holographic images are just considered a "cool new feature" by the average Joe. It's amazing how fast technology has changed our lives, what was total magic just ten tears ago is almost taken for granted now.
The rationalizing of why they would switch from 3.5" to 4" when they always make the right choices was particularly a low point for me, also. I guess I knew what I was getting myself into when I clicked the link, though.
And shockingly, downvotes for calling a spade a spade.
An awfully awkward sentence in a muddled closing, but in context he's not saying it's worth buying just because it says "iPhone". He's saying that they all have just said "iPhone" rather than additionally having the model number.
I've been hitting refresh every five minutes on daringfireball since 7:00.
Note - I think his is the most well written of all the writeups so far. He put a lot of effort into this essay. I wish he did more like these, though I realize it must take a lot out of him.
He also demonstrates a bit of useful insight/balance here, that you wouldn't expect from what should be a purely apple-biased review, e.g. from the section on displays "Apple has a lead here, which is interesting, because they buy these displays from companies like LG."
Just so that we're clear- I'm not reading The Onion right now?
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/17/bbc-loving-apple-looks-like-a...
That doesn't tell you if it's a better phone than the 4S (or the GSIII, or whatever). All it does is give you a good reason to want it more than the 4S.
I think you miswrote "shill".
So really there are only three display targets. iPhone, iPad and Tall iPhone.
One would assume the iOS simulator will allow you to pick the taller aspect ratio on boot.
For example, the article about the inconsistencies in Android 4.x was pretty well done and definitely points out issues I've had with Android.
I've never owned an iOS device so I want to hear all the pros and cons. Raving reviews like this one do nothing to persuade me to buy it.
Personally I have never typed with a thumb, and I was surprised to discover that some people actually do that.
Even if you are convinced typing with your thumb is your main desire in life, there are people with thumbs of different sizes. What if my thumb is 3.7 inches, not 3.5 inches. Apple would be stealing 0.2 inches from my optimal screen estate then, just to please the masses. Or what if my thumb is only 3.0 inches? No thumb typing for me :-(
What I am saying: yes, the 3.5 iPhone screen size may by just right - for a selected group of users with specific use cases and specific thumb sizes. Thank god there is Android with a little variation in devices.
How about: Apple got this wrong?
To be fair to Apple, if they came out with a 4" or 4.5" back in 2007 it would have strangely large compared to everything else on the market (not to mention having the properties Gruber also mentions). The 3.5" screen made perfect sense then. However, what Apple didn't do was foresee that most consumers would prefer larger screens, and this doesn't fit with the Apple ideal of One True Resolution. (Yes, now there are two resolutions for iPhones, but only the vertical resolution has changed.)
He even admits there were some people who couldn't even use 3.5" displays one handed. Is the Apple kool-aid wearing off?
I find Daring Fireball to be at its best when Gruber pushes back on Apple's design decisions with thoughtful critique: skeuomorphism, Safari tabs experiments, this screen thing.
I won't be installing iOS 6, I don't think it's finished and shouldn't be released in its current state. Too much functionality is lost with new maps.
I get the feeling that it's all downhill from here...
Once you throw some control bars at the top and the bottom of the content, you're pretty much there. They keyboard definitely needed more screen space above it as well.
I won't be holding my breath on that one. iPhones have always been more fragile than most comparable high end phones.
Anecdotally, I rarely see uncased iPhones in the wild - and I don't expect this to change anytime soon.
I do see lots of people with cases, though I suspect they're for bling and to for the sense of peace-of-mind that they're protecting their shiny object.
That being said, I'm content with my 4s, although I will probably buy my wife a Nokia 920 so I can get a taste of the other side.
Serious question - I think there's something I don't understand here.
"hi, I'm Gruber and I love everything Apple does. Well, surprise: I love the iPhone 5 too!"