Gadgetory

hey guys it's random in a minute for a pocket now come and this is our full review of the iPhone 5 let's get to it now in its sixth iteration not 5th like the name would leave you to believe the iPhone 5 is the biggest change in form factor yet for the first time Apple is gone with a 16 by 9 aspect ratio display a real relief for those that hate the black bars that show up when you're watching HD content on the iPhone 4s and below but then the iPhone 5 cannot display true HD content because it's screen resolution is a non-standard 11 36 by 640 instead of the 1280 by 720 resolution we find on many of the latest Android phones but this doesn't impact the user much as movies and TV shows played back in HD is effortlessly downsample to accommodate the strange resolution on the iPhone 5 HD content looks fantastic on the iPhone 5 display though we'd prefer watching a high def movie on the galaxy s3 or 1x any day because there's nothing like a spacious display for looking at videos then there's the matter of screen size consumers obviously want larger screens a large screen once met a thick form factor but as HTC is shown with the One X and a Samsung is shown with the galaxy s3 you can have a big screen and still have a thin profile to keep with the times Apple increase the display by a mere half inch to 4 inches as to not impact the already great one-handed usability of the device the larger screen is an improvement especially when looking at email lists browsing the web or looking at your Facebook Timeline because you can see more without having to scroll but the frustrating placement of the back button in iOS in the upper left corner is made worse by the taller screen if you have small hands hopefully your thumb is a lot of flexibility and Android the back button is always on the bottom of the phone so you're never having to stretch unless you're opening the notification shade the screen quality on the iPhone 5 has improved versus the forest color saturation is improved and so is contrast overall we were hugely impressed with the quality of the 5s display as it was extremely well balanced and super sharp and clear thanks to the 326 PPI in terms of touch sensitivity the iPhone 5 now integrates this touch sensor into the display allowing it to be thinner has this improved the touch sensitivity of the display actually no in fact we found touch sensitivity to feel a little bit more numb on the iPhone 5 compared to the 4s it's not a big problem but you should keep your expectations in check let's talk about the design of the iPhone 5 which comes in black or white your choice of color determines several things about the phone including the front plate the tint of the metal on the back and on the sides and the color of the four antenna dividers whether you go with black or white the iPhone 5s back panel is now aluminum it's a smooth untextured surface that does a good job hiding fingerprints and deterring scratches what doesn't deter scratches is the polished Apple logo on the back which scratched after just two days of careful testing on our unit where the sides meet the back you get a brilliant tapered metal edge that looks and feels extremely precise unfortunately this edge is prone to chipping and prone to picking up fingerprints our unit came from the factory with a nick in this edge and we're hearing similar reports from a large fraction of new iPhone 5 owners at the end of the day you're going to want to put a case on the iPhone 5 and with Apple not to make a bumper this time you have to look to a third party also on the back is the same 8 megapixel camera that was found on the iPhone 4s except this time there's a scratch resistant lens and what appears to be a bigger flash more on the camera later Apple didn't do away with the glass on the rear of the phone entirely there are glass accents that flank the aluminum backing giving the phone of beautiful elegance and providing the user with a second type of texture while beautiful we worry about how easily it is to crack these small pieces of glass as they look difficult to replace unlike the back glass panel of the 4 and 4s which could be swapped easily on the bottom of the phone are a bunch of drilled holes for the speaker which we found to be louder than on the iPhone 4s and one of three microphones there's also the new Lightning charging and syncing port which we like more than the bulky and non reversible 30 pin connector while we understand the reasons for going to a smaller connector we wish Apple would have included a free converter with all new iPhones instead for charging a ridiculous 29 bucks and finally on the right side we see the new nano SIM tray if you have a micro sim that you want to use it's easy to trim down the size to fit the nano SIM tray check out our video tutorial on how to do so in hand the iPhone 5 feels remarkable at seven point six millimeters in depth the thinness of the phone is absolutely striking Apple has done a good job at making the iPhone feel like a sophisticated and meticulously crafted device in your head and not only is it thin but it's insanely lightweight at 112 grams which is lighter than the lightest phone we can think of the galaxy s2 it's so light that some are saying that it feels cheap but we didn't think that let's talk about specs the iPhone 5 is running with Apple's a6 dual-core CPU that runs around one gigahertz in each core it has double the RAM of its predecessor with one gigabyte Apple claims that the iPhone 5 is twice as fast as the 4s is this true to see for yourself we recommend that you check out our iphone 5 vs 4s comparison but in brief we can tell you that yes there's definitely a significant bump in speed when opening apps loading a webpage or just when flipping through settings whether it's a full 2x increase we can't be sure but make no mistake about it the iPhone 5 is fast you act it responds without lag or hesitation it confidently can handle whatever you throw at it with that said iOS is still heavy with screen animations which at times can make the experience feel a little bit slower running jelly bean on one of the latest Android phones just feels more snappy even if the hardware is less capable than one is inside the iPhone 5 but the iPhone 5 is a gaming monster for example playing asphalt 7 with the a6 CPU and the higher resolution display was a highly immersive and fast-paced experience if you can stand the tremendous strain on battery most games like shadow gun haven't been updated for the higher resolution screen nevertheless playing it with black bars on the side was an equally smooth experience and the iPhone 5 is LTE whether on AT&T Verizon or Sprint we tested the iPhone 5 on AT&T LTE network in Philadelphia and we're able to clock some extremely impressive LTE speeds of 25 to 50 megabits per second down and about 10 to 20 megabits per second pop in terms of Wi-Fi performance the iPhone 5 is slightly better than the 4s in terms of speed and signal strategy having LTE on the iPhone dramatically improves the experience especially if you have coverage in your area everything is just fast let's talk about the software so are there any features of iOS 6 that are better or different on the iPhone 5 compared to other iOS products not exactly although some features just work better on the iPhone 5 thanks to the better processor for example flyover in maps is much smoother on the iPhone 5 if you like that future also FaceTime over LTE is much better than FaceTime over 3G beyond that the iPhone 5 benefits from the many rather small incremental updates to Apple's mobile operating systems such as passbook shared photo streams Siri functions full screen landscape web browsing and so forth and if we sound unexcited about iOS 6 it's because we pretty much are the iPhone 5 is a taller screen and Apple is encouraging developers to do more with their apps than just stretch them so that they work on the iPhone 5 so far it looks like developers are just stretching their apps we just find by us if you run into an app that isn't updated for the iPhone 5 you will get black bars on the top and the bottom which isn't much of a problem and we anticipate by the end of October most major apps will have been updated for the higher res display now let's talk about some test shows first battery life apple claims that the iPhone 5 gets better battery life than on the 4s and there right but only by a small margin whereas the iPhone 4s could go an entire day and no more with heavy use the iPhone 5 will last a few hours more under the same conditions more specifically with heavy web browsing over LTE and Wi-Fi several calls a few gaming sessions and some I messaging our iPhone 5 taken off the charger at 8 a.m. was at about 20% battery by 11 p.m. not too bad and onto the camera until the galaxy s3 came out the iPhone 4s was the unrivaled champion in photo and video quality on a smartphone the iPhone 5 is marginally better but indeed better than the 4s in photo and video quality low-light pictures come out better color saturation is improved and even audio seems crisper speaking of the camera the front-facing camera is now higher resolution and can take videos in 720p this also means that FaceTime calls are clearer visually and our testing FaceTime calls were indeed higher resolution but only when network conditions were perfect how about FaceTime over cellular if your network allows it well it works with a disastrous effect on battery life we should say and the phone heats up a lot when you do it also there might be a bug with FaceTime even over Wi-Fi during several tests cause we got this poor connection message Apple is trying to reinvent the earphones with the new ear pods bundled free with all i phone 5s they are indeed a huge leap better than your typical earbud they have more bass and improved mid-range they just feel a little strange in the ear or maybe they just feel different and it's something to get used to finally we can report that call quality and in call volume was fantastic apple claims there is a new type of noise cancellation and in noisy environments we had an easy time hearing the caller on the other end and they also reported a clear audio connection also the iPhone 5 supports wideband audio which is kind of like HD voice but most carriers including AT&T doesn't support that just yet so we weren't able to report on how that works in conclusion the iPhone 5 is an incredible phone everything that it does it knows well it has a great camera it's got great battery life it has an amazing enhance high quality feel and as LTE networking and it has great software at the end of the day that is very reliable and that just works that said if you want a phone that you can customize more a phone that has a bigger screen and still as high quality hardware we recommend the galaxy s3 overall we give the iPhone a 9 out of 10 thanks for watching