14 ms·

iPhone 5

264 points by CoachRufus87 14y ago

DigitalSea 14y ago
Yawn. Looks like a taller iPhone 4 with an ugly back. Looks like Apple have stopped innovating, I guess the patent litigation industry is more profitable for them these days.
jmspring 14y ago
I wonder if the CDMA versions are also going to be GSM compatible as the 4S was.
- chasingtheflow 14y ago
  The radio is universal CDMA/GSM/LTE.
  - ebuchholz 14y ago
    I didn't realize they had the single Qualcomm chip for CDMA/GSM back on the 4S too. That's a nice piece of tech.
    - veemjeem 14y ago
      That's what people in semiconductors do -- they try to take a bunch of features and package it in a single chip to reduce costs. There are chips out there with temperature, accelerometer, and proximity sensors packaged in a single unit. There was a time when an actual quartz crystal was needed as a resonator, and now those are replaced with mems technology so that one can package more into a single silicon chip. I'm sure we can all remember the time when the cpu & gpu were separate chips.
  - 3JPLW 14y ago
    Kinda sorta. See the tech specs page[0] and the LTE compatibility page[1]. There are actually three different models. All three have 3G GSM/EDGE support. But they support different LTE bands. And only the CDMA model adds the CDMA frequencies. > GSM model A1428: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 4 and 17) > CDMA model A1429: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25) > GSM model A1429: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5) [0] https://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html https://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html [1] https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/
kayoone 14y ago
Solid device, nothing groundbreaking but catching up with the competition..I am not sure about the form factor though
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
meritt 14y ago
New iEverything except iMac. Come on Apple, we know it's imminent. Just announce the damn thing.
- calciphus 14y ago
  No new iPad either. Also no new Mac Pros.
- m_eiman 14y ago
  It'll come in late October, along with the new iTunes version.
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  And no iWork ;-( iWork (for Mac and iPad) are both amazing. So sad iWork for Mac is still called "iWork '09".
chuinard 14y ago
How is the 'biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone' simply a taller screen and newer processor? What about NFC? Wireless charging? Sorry Apple, but this just isn't that impressive.
- calciphus 14y ago
  They meant it's physically biggest. The only excitement they could generate was "it's slightly taller!"
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Perhaps it's the beginning of the end, eh? Jobs's legacy may not last long.
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    Because if there's one thing Steve Jobs was known for, it was cramming in as many tick-list features as possible. /s
  - batista 14y ago
    Were you even along for the ride man? Jobs/Apple was never about bundling tons of irrelevant features together (wireless charging? Please...), and winning by ticking feature checkboxes. Jobs used to introduce a new iPod model every year or so. And he also got to introduce 4 iPhone models. Lots of times the changes were incremental (3G -> 3GS for example). Heck, back in the day, a new color or some more storage was considered a huge improvement over the previous iPod model. People literally went bezerk in the possibility that the next iPod could also play video (imagine that!). And now you have a mature phone, in it's 6th version, fast as hell, with a GPU that you would have killed for to have in your laptop half a decade ago, camera, gyro, retina, bigger screen, thin, new extremely featured iOS, some 500.000+ apps etc. What exactly do you want with that? Magic sprinkle dust? I would be satisfied even if Apple had only sticked to making computers/OS. They have far surpassed that. Nobody even asked them to make mp3 players, phones, or tablets in the first place. Since we will be using all of the above for the next 20 years, I think they will be fine, even if they dont pull another market/device out of their hats...
JohnsonB 14y ago
No dedicated Camera button. Apple sacrificing usability for design once again.
- jamroom 14y ago
  the up volume button controls the shutter when in the camera app.
  - planb 14y ago
    And since iOS 5 there's a shortcut that takes you to the camera directly from the lock screen.
    - josefresco 14y ago
      Which has me turning my phone off, and then unlocking to the camera because it's quicker than swiping 3-4 times to get to my camera app.
      - clarky07 14y ago
        or you could hit the home button. surely camera app is important enough to make it onto page 1?
  - JohnsonB 14y ago
    And that's not dedicated, so you have to launch the app any time you want to take a picture, so you miss photo opportunities doing that. Dedicated is like Windows Phone where pressing the button takes a picture, regardless of the app you're in.
    - podperson 14y ago
      I'd call this an antifeature. Generally, I want to decide when to use the camera. (Also, I have children.)
      - 14y ago
cryptoz 14y ago
I was really hoping for a barometer so I could recruit iOS users to pressureNET. No such luck. Maybe next time.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mladenkovacevic 14y ago
  Yes I think you're the cat I was looking for! I recently got a Galaxy Nexus and I remember reading here a while ago about your app that crowd sources barometer readings from phones that have it but I couldn't remember what it was called when I got the GNex. I'll go sign up. Thanks.
- pennig 14y ago
  Oh. You were serious. I feel bad for laughing now.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    Yeah, what a loser for collecting weather information... ?
- nostromo 14y ago
  Cool project dude! But why on Earth does any phone ship with a barometer? Weather is the only application I can think of, and surely it's easier just to pull weather conditions from the network.
  - pndmnm 14y ago
    MEMS barometers are commonly used for relative altimetry (e.g. stair climb calculations on activity trackers, etc).
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      How accurate are they for relative altimetry indoors? I could imagine climate control throwing in a decent margin of error if all the inputs/outputs (vents and blowers?) aren't balanced correctly. Edit: They probably carry barometers already, but AC installer people could make use of phones with this hardware.
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Are Apple skipping the keynote altogether now, or did I miss something?
- stordoff 14y ago
  You missed it. Engadget's live coverage (for example) is here: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/12/apple-iphone-5-liveblog/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/12/apple-iphone-5-liveblog/
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    Oops. I guess it wasn't that hyped, then.
- kentwistle 14y ago
  http://live.gdgt.com/live-iphone-5-launch-coverage/ http://live.gdgt.com/live-iphone-5-launch-coverage/
iag 14y ago
Wow, I can't believe I missed the Apple announcement today. I've caught every other announcement til now. It's sad but that just shows little hype there are around this new iphone. =\
propercoil 14y ago
facebook integrated - no thank you apple, we want privacy
- seangarita 14y ago
  All you have to do is... well nothing. Just don't add your facebook account.
- onetimeuse001 14y ago
  "facebook integrated - no thank you apple, we want privacy" Who's we? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_statistics Personally I use it on a separate browser but wanted to point out that you (and me) are in the minority.
- rimantas 14y ago
  Guess who can give you more privacy: Apple making money from selling hardware, or Google making money from selling ads?
onetimeuse001 14y ago
Looks pretty cool to me. As for specs some people love: I don't care much, provided everything works smoothly and seamlessly. (Fine tuning Apache and MySQL has saved me tons of cash by doing a lot more with the same hardware.) Now replace Redmond with ...http://farm1.staticflickr.com/29/43356340_36deb98522.jpg http://farm1.staticflickr.com/29/43356340_36deb98522.jpg :)
grecy 14y ago
Hmm "Lightning to USB Cable". Doesn't say if it's USB 3, and doesn't say if in the future, it could be Lightning to Thunderbolt.
- dmbass 14y ago
  Damn I kind of assumed it would be Thunderbolt. Guess they're just preparing for when Thunderbolt controllers are small enough to fit inside.
- veemjeem 14y ago
  I like that their new cables are reversible. I hate how the micro-usb connectors can only fit one way, and it's not obvious which way the connector is when viewing from a distance. I always have to squint at the hole & cable every time I charge my phone (I have a nexus s)... it's too bad I'll never find an android phone with this kind of connector.
SnaKeZ 14y ago
No USB connector, really sad.
- Watabou 14y ago
  There is apparently. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/34865/Screenshots/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-12%20at%2011.57.29%20AM.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/34865/Screenshots/Screen%20Shot%202...
  - SnaKeZ 14y ago
    With adapter.
  - scdc 14y ago
    To me, "Lightning to USB cable" means something to connect it to a charge brick or your Mac/PC, just like the 30-pin to USB cables they used to include.
    - Watabou 14y ago
      Yeah. I was thinking for a second there that it was Lightning to Thunderbolt and that I would have to pay extra just to buy the USB adapter to charge the new iPhone. Glad that's not the case.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Good. Micro USB is an awful connector.
csmattryder 14y ago
I remember when the 4 was 'The' phone to have, and two iterations later, Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets. Especially the odd approach they're taking with NFC & Passbook in iOS 6. Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products? I was holding off on a new handset until the iPhone 5, but the Nokia's Lumina series seems to do more.
- joe_bleau 14y ago
  Maybe the NFC hardware is there, and the software support wasn't ready in time? We'll see once the teardowns commence.
- philwelch 14y ago
  > Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products? The hardware's not ready yet? After all, the original iPhone was arguably "perfectly suited" for 3G and GPS, though the hardware for those things wasn't ready until the iPhone 3G. Maybe NFC is on the roadmap for iPhone 5S?
- bratsche 14y ago
  "Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets" This seems like it must be a joke, but I read a lot of people saying things like this. The sum of a phone are the features that come with it right out of the box, like little checkboxes to look for, without regard for the quality of their implementations or their usefulness in general. And here of all places, Hacker News, to show such complete disregard for the 3rd party app market (and the quality of their apps). iOS has much, much higher quality apps available in general than either Android or WP7. And while iPhone may not yet have NFC capabilities that the average user probably has little or no use for right now anyway, it does have things like a very nice music player that stomps on Android's. A fucking music player, that's like the first app that both iPhone and Android had, and the one in iOS has always been superior. But somehow iOS is the one playing catch-up. I just don't understand this new mindset that iOS has fallen behind Android, much less WP7.
  - deleted 14y ago
fcambus 14y ago
This pretty much sums it up : http://blog.textoo.net/graphics/iphone5/ http://blog.textoo.net/graphics/iphone5/
- brackin 14y ago
  Not really, it's not actually bigger. Just taller, only 4" not 6.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    They had to save some things for the iPhone 6.
jstalin 14y ago
The marginal improvements are diminishing...
joelrunyon 14y ago
When are these actually available?
- ciniglio 14y ago
  Sept 21st with preorders on sept 14
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
rdl 14y ago
Lack of NFC makes me sad, but I've been screwing around with Bluetooth 4.0 LE recently, and I think I can do basically all the things I want (in a closed ecosystem -- access control, digital leash, etc.) using 4.0 LE, and then use 2d barcodes on screen for interfacing to existing systems. It fails to mass transit, but I have a car. The main things I would have liked: * "geofencing" in some security-strong way to let a phone use a 4-digit pin when in home/office, and a longer PIN when outside the home/office. Could ninja this on Android I think (you'd do some kind of low-latency challenge-response on a LAN -- depending on the threat model, even 802.1X might be ok, but wouldn't resist an RF relay over a long tunnel...) * Biometric authentication on the device * Integrated credential management ("Passbook for Websites") where SSL client certs, passwords, or something got managed inside the secure element of the phone And, a real stretch, but a 128 or 256GB "pro" version of the phone, even if it cost 2x as much. Kill the iPod Classic.
- bduerst 14y ago
  Can you get bluetooth 4.0 to passively listen to active NFC signals?
  - heartbreak 14y ago
    Unlikely. NFC operates around 13MHz, and Bluetooth is 2.4Ghz, I believe.
    - rdl 14y ago
      The least crazy thing old be an iPhone case which does NFC and talks bt 4.0 to the phone.
  - heartbreak 14y ago
    Unlikely. NFC operates around 13MHz, and Bluetooth is 2.4Ghz, I believe.
  - heartbreak 14y ago
    Unlikely. NFC operates around 13MHz, and Bluetooth is 2.4Ghz, I believe.
draz 14y ago
has anybody seen the pricing for this?? outrageous!! http://static.ips.apple.com.edgekey.net/ipa_preauth/content/catalog/en_US/index.html http://static.ips.apple.com.edgekey.net/ipa_preauth/content/... Look specifically at the data plans
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  !!! Why is Verizon so popular in the U.S.? I see no (absolutely no) reason why someone should choose Verizon over Sprint... Verizon plans are about a hundred times more expensive.
  - scdc 14y ago
    Coverage. Especially in the west.
    - WiseWeasel 14y ago
      Sprint roams on VZ's network.
    - dsl 14y ago
      Sprint users get free access to Verizon's network until 2016.
      - tesseractive 14y ago
        I know they have a 3G agreement, but do they use Verizon's LTE network too? That makes a huge difference.
        dsl 14y ago
        The agreement is technology agnostic. I had to escalate up a few times and after some persistance, got a call back from someone who was engineering level.
  - slykat 14y ago
nikic 14y ago
I wanted to watch the video on the page, but it told me to install QuickTime. Yeah, sure...
- upinsmoke 14y ago
  No Silverlight I guess.
kmtrowbr 14y ago
This announcement plays into my theory that Apple will miss Steve Jobs a lot. It was very much a 'gradual improvement' -- and 'routine' announcement. A few missteps, from my perspective: * Apple Maps -- while this may prove good for mapping technology in the long run, I think the iPhone users will miss Google Maps quite a bit, for now. * Seemingly no fundamental improvement to Siri. "Conversational Searching" is the best way for Apple to bring the fight to Google, because this is the natural evolution of search. Why type queries into a search engine, when you can have a conversation with an AI instead? Google sees this danger and is developing Google Now, leaping ahead quickly. * No signs of trying to get into the emerging mobile payments battle. All in all I didn't get the feeling of a large vision being played out or of an arc of forward advance, but rather a feeling of slowing momentum.
morphir 14y ago
is the screen still made of glass that will shatter if you drop it to the ground? If glass, I hope they have managed to hardend it. Also I dont want those silly bands/rubber rings around the phone.
jdavid 14y ago
The Amazon Kindle HD press conference was more exciting. Kindle x-ray is an amazing feature, and the front lit display is really an achievement. I guess apple doesn't have the same fire to innovate that it used to. This might be proof that Patents don't spur innovation.
- podperson 14y ago
  Really? I found the pacing incredibly slow.
  - jdavid 14y ago
    but the products were more innovative. Apple held back calling last year the iPhone 4S, the 5 because it wasn't good enough to bare the name, but this time there are hardly any core feature upgrades, and you get pulled further away from good google services. the iphone 5 is more about flashy hardware and dumping google than it is about wowing customers. the iphone 4s had a focusing lens, siri and was twice as fast as the iphone4. this phone really doesn't wow me at all.
    - podperson 14y ago
      How are the kindle products innovative? I guess the "white" page book reader is innovative in the sense of licensing a new generation of the e-ink tech (and I have to say it make the readers more attractive to me; I never liked the gray one gray displays), and the front-lighting is new and useful. Aside from that they're tablets with literally zero features we haven't seen before, indeed nothing over the iPad 3. Apple just needs to cut the iPad 3 price by 25% and they're not even compellingly cheap. The iPhone 5 may not wow you, but what does that matter? In general each iPhone generation has only really been compelling to owners of two year old iPhones. I thought the iPhone 4S was nice enough but hung onto my iPhone 4. I thought the 3GS looked nice, but held onto my 3G. (For contrast, I have an original Kindle Fire and the new Kindles do nothing for me. Indeed, having bought a Kindle Fire I probably won't buy another Amazon tablet because they're far more crippled than anything Apple has ever done. E.g. I can't read epubs on it.) The iPod Touch is a huge upgrade. It's literally an iPhone without the cellular plan (it has a 4S CPU, but an iPhone 5 screen).
te_chris 14y ago
There's a css bug for me on the carousel on chrome
podperson 14y ago
One of the things that impressed me (we'll see how well it works) is the panorama function. Plenty of cameras have a automatic panoramas but you'd be surprised how cruddy the results tend to be (often very low resolution). It looks like the panorama function generates very high resolution output.
zerohm 14y ago
Thinner, lighter, faster, better battery life, and it has a bigger screen. I will take these over NFC and wireless charging any day. Sometimes they are ahead in raw specs (screen ppi), sometimes they are behind (LTE), but everything they include, or don't include, is well thought out. (e.g., at the time of the 4s release 4G LTE phones suffered from terrible battery life)
bstewartnyc 14y ago
20% lighter - because that was a big problem lugging around that heavy iphone 4. slimmer - because that thick fat iphone 4 taking up way too much room in my pocket faster - because my iphone 4 is too slow? what I'd upgrade for: screen that is readable in direct sunlight or when wearing polarized sunglasses, camera that takes picture the instant I touch the button, better phone reception
- pooriaazimi 14y ago
  I think they said it now takes photos 40% faster (or so) than 4S. And that takes photos much faster than my 4.
- jws 14y ago
  20% lighter – Without exception, my $20 t-shirts wear out by failure of the fabric at the upper righthand corner of the pocket[1]. I get a little hole from keeping my iPhone in there. 20% lighter might save me a few t-shirts a year. camera that takes picture the instant I touch the button – sounds like you want the 40% faster image capture time. readable in direct sunlight or when wearing polarized sunglasses – yeah, me too. Still waiting on OLED to beat LCD. EOM [1] that wouldn't stop me from wearing them, but as soon as my wife sees the hole the shirt vanishes.
PhrosTT 14y ago
What percentage of people sitting on upgrades are now debating just switching to Android?
- achompas 14y ago
  Right here. No map directions, hardware failures (home button is dead after two years), and Android catching up in UI responsiveness and app availability means I'm looking at the upcoming Nexus phones more than this.
  - clarky07 14y ago
    And here I have several friends with Android phones that are considering switching to the iPhone because of hardware failures and unresponsive UI's. (One of them has a broken keyboard and a broken GPS). I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. FWIW, there are map directions in iOS 6.
    - achompas 14y ago
      Interesting. Are any of them using Nexus devices? Also, I've heard repeatedly that iOS 6, and its new built-in Maps, lacks transit directions. Has that changed?
      - clarky07 14y ago
        they are using droids i think. i don't know about transit, but the parent just said "map directions" which i was guessing meant turn by turn. i was thinking there are third party apps with transit directions but i could be wrong about that.
- vvhn 14y ago
  i'm guessing the same number after iPhone 4S ?
- jes5199 14y ago
  I had to switch away from Android to iPhone because although there's a lot about Android I prefer, I need my basic apps to run without fucking crashing. I'm talking about sending sms being impossible because the stock SMS app crashes. Being unable to use Maps because typing in the blank caused it to crash. And the thing is, I suspect that there are good Android phones that don't have these problems, but several of my friends have phones from several different vendors that are nearly unusable. It's like a minefield - I want to buy my girlfriend a replacement for her mostly-broken Android phone, but I have no idea how to evaluate whether a given model will be a broken piece of shit. At least iPhone is a known quality - I miss having a decent Maps app, but at least it isn't broken.
kisstheblade 14y ago
Wireless charging, finally mainstream! Oh wait, they DIDN'T include it? At least I can take good pictures easily with it, you know just press the button no matter what you are doing. No? So this is just a CPU upgrade, wow! Probably a solid device, a little outdated camera and charging etc, but the apple hype is getting annoying. Every new device is tried to be sold off as the biggest thing ever. So what is better in the iphone5 than eg a lumia 920 except the "ecosystem" (appstore, millions of apps)? The lumia is better at least in these: - nfc - wireless charging - best camera phone after the 808 - great inbuilt free gps/navigation - excellent exchange and MS documents integration (important for business users, not so much for startup kid-wonders of course)
shayonj 14y ago
To sum it all up, were you really expecting Time travel? If so, move on; It's an amazing phone. At time times you need to take little small steps and a little moderate steps, to archive something big ;).
ComputerGuru 14y ago
I would argue the biggest thing to happen to the iPhone since the iPhone was the retina display, no?
navs 14y ago
Oh no a bigger screen. I for one am happy with the current screen size. Sure make it faster, slimmer but not wider and longer!
mtalantikite 14y ago
To talk about the software, I've been using Apple Maps in beta for the past couple of months, and having no transit directions while living in NYC is enough for me to consider a switch to android. Trying to take the subway to unfamiliar parts of the city forces me to use google maps in the browser. Addresses seem to be hit or miss -- I've often spent time searching for an establishment or address just to give up and use google maps in the browser. I've basically had to revert to how I got around the city prior to having a smartphone -- use my computer and remember how I need to get there before I leave. Apple Maps is potentially a huge fail for anyone living in a major city.
- _rs 14y ago
  Hopefully projects like this will fill the void. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/228865951/transit-app-for-ios-6-and-beyond http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/228865951/transit-app-fo...
  - Spearchucker 14y ago
    Maps on my phone are crucial to me. The single most important feature is offline use - I often sit on the Underground (no Internet) going in the general direction of my meeting, but needing to know if/where I need to change lines, and then how to get from the tube station to the meeting location. So while this looks like it will fill a gap on iOS, it's something I'm unwilling to wait for.
- mikek 14y ago
  Hopefully Google releases a Google Maps app into the App Store, like they did with YouTube. Apple Maps looks like a major regression from Google Maps.
  - brink 14y ago
    To me it would almost make sense for them to not add their google maps application so that it would make them, like mtalantikite consider switching to Android. I don't know why Google would have much of an incentive to improve iOS when it has it's own operating system to sell.
elorant 14y ago
I don't understand threads like this. What's at stake here, whether Apple is really innovative or not? Whether there should be more features on the phone? Well there aren't. Live with that. If you don't like the phone don't buy it, it's that simple.
skMed 14y ago
I'm seeing a lot of surprise by the lack of NFC, but given the lack of market adoption, I can understand why they may not take it as a high priority. Plus, we've all seen the reports of Apple purchasing AuthenTec and its IdAM solutions. Fingerprint + Passbook + NFC and they will have all the pieces in place to create the NFC market with aggressive merchant partnerships.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
slykat 14y ago
I was hoping for some discussion of the new OS and phone's impact on development instead of a Droid/iPhone flame war since I've just started developing my first iOS app. What's the biggest impact to iOS developers? The only one I can think of is a new aspect ratio. Update: Discussion on Quora: http://www.quora.com/iOS-Development/From-a-developers-perspective-what-new-and-interesting-features-and-notable-changes-are-in-the-iOS-6-SDK http://www.quora.com/iOS-Development/From-a-developers-persp...
codex_irl 14y ago
I have always been impressed by Apples products (I use them to earn a living after all) & was planning to upgrade my tired old iphone 3G to an iphone 5...but now I'm having second thoughts. When a friend handed me his S3 I immediately felt a little wow'd by the screen size, responsiveness & general look / feel of the phone, this new iphone does not look like it will give me the same "wow factor". I am extremely disappointed that Apple have not worked harder to improve the battery life, it has been & remains pathetic, primarily for this reason I will not be buying an iphone 5. Come on Apple, I want to give you my money - but please start putting some creative innovations back into your products, if you cannot do that then at least give us a phone with a battery which can last for a full / busy day.
- clarky07 14y ago
  i've never had any trouble with my battery life while i have friends with android phones that say the lte drains it in 1.5 hours. I'm not sure what you are hoping for, but i don't think switching from apple is going to help your battery life.
  - codex_irl 14y ago
    My hope is a very simple one, I was hoping that I could buy a phone, charge it and that it would not run out of power within a few hours of heavy usage, my co-worker gets a full day of challenging battery use from his S3, which I have been a little more impressed with. Impressive screens & faster chips are all well and good but only if their is enough power in the dam thing to actually keep the device powered on.
superk 14y ago
I was watching the video: http://www.apple.com/iphone/#video http://www.apple.com/iphone/#video And at about 3:35 when they're showing the step-by-step driving directions and I was like WTF: Super attention to every detail, state-of-the-art everything, and then that scratchy godawful synthesized computer voice comes on and it's sounding slightly worse than my Amiga back in the 1980's... srsly Apple...
nodata 14y ago
There's a lot of defensive reactions on here. That's interesting. Where is the feature in this phone which makes you stop and think "wow, how did we not have this before?". There isn't one. That's not good. Apple set the stage for something revolutionary, and what they unveiled was not. It's boring. Again. Come on Apple.
badlogin443 14y ago
This changes everything, again.
DomKM 14y ago
http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ Why aren't all bandwidths supported by a single GSM model? It seems odd that Apple would create one CDMA model and 2 GSM models, but I'm sure there's a technical/financial reason for that decision. Does anyone know what it is?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cstrat 14y ago
There is one huge product flaw that will become apparent in about 2 months, it will begin on YouTube. Vertical video is about to get even worse.
uvTwitch 14y ago
What the fuck kind of retarded vertical resolution is 1136?!
zmmmmm 14y ago
Definitely an interative / evolutionary improvement - but I think they've done a substantial number of things across the board that make it a significant upgrade. I think it's a hard sell though because they have no new "headline" feature to talk about and most of the new things are already in competing forms in other phones, in many cases arguably better. With the 4s they had Siri, past generations had things like Facetime, etc. With this they've got to convince people to get excited about what looks like an incremental improvement, and worse, they have to start doing what they hate - talking about tech specs - the processor is "twice as fast", the phone is thinner, etc. Apple hates competing on tech specs because they know it just sets a bar for all the OEMs to jump over and commoditize the feature. But that is what they have to do with this phone.
kimmiller 14y ago
This iteration is for the masses, it's not for you. It's for my mother (who is taking one-on-one classes in an Apple store), it's for my partner who is just starting to get work done on her phone (she's had an iPhone 4 since they came out) and its for everybody that's just trying to understand mobile. Apple's network and ecosystem is now mature. Any change has to be so thoroughly considered. Anything at all risky (say NFC) gets binned until its proven because they can't upset what they have. Unfortunately this isn't about technology, it's about strategy.
bane 14y ago
I think the fact that this post is about to fall off the front page after less than a day says a lot. Even though it was flagged I still think this post had quite a bit to say http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510356 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510356 that's still relevant after the announcement.
andrewfelix 14y ago
Flagged. Because this is on just about every other news site in the world. This phone upgrade has minimal bearing on hackers.
tsahyt 14y ago
Someone has to do it: A cheap copy of the Goophone i5 we had here a couple of days ago!
gbraad 14y ago
"Bigger, thinner and lighter" as if it was a commercial for period stuff :-/

264 points by CoachRufus87 14y ago

Yawn. Looks like a taller iPhone 4 with an ugly back. Looks like Apple have stopped innovating, I guess the patent litigation industry is more profitable for them these days.

jmspring 14y ago

I wonder if the CDMA versions are also going to be GSM compatible as the 4S was.

chasingtheflow 14y ago
The radio is universal CDMA/GSM/LTE.
- ebuchholz 14y ago
  I didn't realize they had the single Qualcomm chip for CDMA/GSM back on the 4S too. That's a nice piece of tech.
  - veemjeem 14y ago
    That's what people in semiconductors do -- they try to take a bunch of features and package it in a single chip to reduce costs. There are chips out there with temperature, accelerometer, and proximity sensors packaged in a single unit. There was a time when an actual quartz crystal was needed as a resonator, and now those are replaced with mems technology so that one can package more into a single silicon chip. I'm sure we can all remember the time when the cpu & gpu were separate chips.
- 3JPLW 14y ago
  Kinda sorta. See the tech specs page[0] and the LTE compatibility page[1]. There are actually three different models. All three have 3G GSM/EDGE support. But they support different LTE bands. And only the CDMA model adds the CDMA frequencies. > GSM model A1428: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 4 and 17) > CDMA model A1429: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25) > GSM model A1429: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5) [0] https://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html https://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html [1] https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/

kayoone 14y ago

Solid device, nothing groundbreaking but catching up with the competition..I am not sure about the form factor though

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

meritt 14y ago

New iEverything except iMac. Come on Apple, we know it's imminent. Just announce the damn thing.

calciphus 14y ago
No new iPad either. Also no new Mac Pros.
m_eiman 14y ago
It'll come in late October, along with the new iTunes version.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
And no iWork ;-( iWork (for Mac and iPad) are both amazing. So sad iWork for Mac is still called "iWork '09".

chuinard 14y ago

How is the 'biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone' simply a taller screen and newer processor? What about NFC? Wireless charging? Sorry Apple, but this just isn't that impressive.

calciphus 14y ago
They meant it's physically biggest. The only excitement they could generate was "it's slightly taller!"
TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Perhaps it's the beginning of the end, eh? Jobs's legacy may not last long.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  Because if there's one thing Steve Jobs was known for, it was cramming in as many tick-list features as possible. /s
- batista 14y ago
  Were you even along for the ride man? Jobs/Apple was never about bundling tons of irrelevant features together (wireless charging? Please...), and winning by ticking feature checkboxes. Jobs used to introduce a new iPod model every year or so. And he also got to introduce 4 iPhone models. Lots of times the changes were incremental (3G -> 3GS for example). Heck, back in the day, a new color or some more storage was considered a huge improvement over the previous iPod model. People literally went bezerk in the possibility that the next iPod could also play video (imagine that!). And now you have a mature phone, in it's 6th version, fast as hell, with a GPU that you would have killed for to have in your laptop half a decade ago, camera, gyro, retina, bigger screen, thin, new extremely featured iOS, some 500.000+ apps etc. What exactly do you want with that? Magic sprinkle dust? I would be satisfied even if Apple had only sticked to making computers/OS. They have far surpassed that. Nobody even asked them to make mp3 players, phones, or tablets in the first place. Since we will be using all of the above for the next 20 years, I think they will be fine, even if they dont pull another market/device out of their hats...

JohnsonB 14y ago

No dedicated Camera button. Apple sacrificing usability for design once again.

jamroom 14y ago
the up volume button controls the shutter when in the camera app.
- planb 14y ago
  And since iOS 5 there's a shortcut that takes you to the camera directly from the lock screen.
  - josefresco 14y ago
    Which has me turning my phone off, and then unlocking to the camera because it's quicker than swiping 3-4 times to get to my camera app.
    - clarky07 14y ago
      or you could hit the home button. surely camera app is important enough to make it onto page 1?
- JohnsonB 14y ago
  And that's not dedicated, so you have to launch the app any time you want to take a picture, so you miss photo opportunities doing that. Dedicated is like Windows Phone where pressing the button takes a picture, regardless of the app you're in.
  - podperson 14y ago
    I'd call this an antifeature. Generally, I want to decide when to use the camera. (Also, I have children.)
    - 14y ago

cryptoz 14y ago

I was really hoping for a barometer so I could recruit iOS users to pressureNET. No such luck. Maybe next time.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mladenkovacevic 14y ago
Yes I think you're the cat I was looking for! I recently got a Galaxy Nexus and I remember reading here a while ago about your app that crowd sources barometer readings from phones that have it but I couldn't remember what it was called when I got the GNex. I'll go sign up. Thanks.
pennig 14y ago
Oh. You were serious. I feel bad for laughing now.
- jrockway 14y ago
  Yeah, what a loser for collecting weather information... ?
nostromo 14y ago
Cool project dude! But why on Earth does any phone ship with a barometer? Weather is the only application I can think of, and surely it's easier just to pull weather conditions from the network.
- pndmnm 14y ago
  MEMS barometers are commonly used for relative altimetry (e.g. stair climb calculations on activity trackers, etc).
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    How accurate are they for relative altimetry indoors? I could imagine climate control throwing in a decent margin of error if all the inputs/outputs (vents and blowers?) aren't balanced correctly. Edit: They probably carry barometers already, but AC installer people could make use of phones with this hardware.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

Are Apple skipping the keynote altogether now, or did I miss something?

stordoff 14y ago
You missed it. Engadget's live coverage (for example) is here: http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/12/apple-iphone-5-liveblog/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/12/apple-iphone-5-liveblog/
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Oops. I guess it wasn't that hyped, then.
kentwistle 14y ago
http://live.gdgt.com/live-iphone-5-launch-coverage/ http://live.gdgt.com/live-iphone-5-launch-coverage/

iag 14y ago

Wow, I can't believe I missed the Apple announcement today. I've caught every other announcement til now. It's sad but that just shows little hype there are around this new iphone. =\

propercoil 14y ago

facebook integrated - no thank you apple, we want privacy

seangarita 14y ago
All you have to do is... well nothing. Just don't add your facebook account.
onetimeuse001 14y ago
"facebook integrated - no thank you apple, we want privacy" Who's we? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_statistics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_statistics Personally I use it on a separate browser but wanted to point out that you (and me) are in the minority.
rimantas 14y ago
Guess who can give you more privacy: Apple making money from selling hardware, or Google making money from selling ads?

onetimeuse001 14y ago

Looks pretty cool to me. As for specs some people love: I don't care much, provided everything works smoothly and seamlessly. (Fine tuning Apache and MySQL has saved me tons of cash by doing a lot more with the same hardware.) Now replace Redmond with ...http://farm1.staticflickr.com/29/43356340_36deb98522.jpg http://farm1.staticflickr.com/29/43356340_36deb98522.jpg :)

grecy 14y ago

Hmm "Lightning to USB Cable". Doesn't say if it's USB 3, and doesn't say if in the future, it could be Lightning to Thunderbolt.

dmbass 14y ago
Damn I kind of assumed it would be Thunderbolt. Guess they're just preparing for when Thunderbolt controllers are small enough to fit inside.
veemjeem 14y ago
I like that their new cables are reversible. I hate how the micro-usb connectors can only fit one way, and it's not obvious which way the connector is when viewing from a distance. I always have to squint at the hole & cable every time I charge my phone (I have a nexus s)... it's too bad I'll never find an android phone with this kind of connector.

SnaKeZ 14y ago

No USB connector, really sad.

Watabou 14y ago
There is apparently. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/34865/Screenshots/Screen%20Shot%202012-09-12%20at%2011.57.29%20AM.png https://dl.dropbox.com/u/34865/Screenshots/Screen%20Shot%202...
- SnaKeZ 14y ago
  With adapter.
- scdc 14y ago
  To me, "Lightning to USB cable" means something to connect it to a charge brick or your Mac/PC, just like the 30-pin to USB cables they used to include.
  - Watabou 14y ago
    Yeah. I was thinking for a second there that it was Lightning to Thunderbolt and that I would have to pay extra just to buy the USB adapter to charge the new iPhone. Glad that's not the case.
arrrg 14y ago
Good. Micro USB is an awful connector.

csmattryder 14y ago

I remember when the 4 was 'The' phone to have, and two iterations later, Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets. Especially the odd approach they're taking with NFC & Passbook in iOS 6. Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products? I was holding off on a new handset until the iPhone 5, but the Nokia's Lumina series seems to do more.

joe_bleau 14y ago
Maybe the NFC hardware is there, and the software support wasn't ready in time? We'll see once the teardowns commence.
philwelch 14y ago
> Why make a product perfectly suited for NFC, then just not use it in your newest products? The hardware's not ready yet? After all, the original iPhone was arguably "perfectly suited" for 3G and GPS, though the hardware for those things wasn't ready until the iPhone 3G. Maybe NFC is on the roadmap for iPhone 5S?
bratsche 14y ago
"Apple are now seemingly playing me-too with Android/WP7-based handsets" This seems like it must be a joke, but I read a lot of people saying things like this. The sum of a phone are the features that come with it right out of the box, like little checkboxes to look for, without regard for the quality of their implementations or their usefulness in general. And here of all places, Hacker News, to show such complete disregard for the 3rd party app market (and the quality of their apps). iOS has much, much higher quality apps available in general than either Android or WP7. And while iPhone may not yet have NFC capabilities that the average user probably has little or no use for right now anyway, it does have things like a very nice music player that stomps on Android's. A fucking music player, that's like the first app that both iPhone and Android had, and the one in iOS has always been superior. But somehow iOS is the one playing catch-up. I just don't understand this new mindset that iOS has fallen behind Android, much less WP7.
- deleted 14y ago

fcambus 14y ago

This pretty much sums it up : http://blog.textoo.net/graphics/iphone5/ http://blog.textoo.net/graphics/iphone5/

brackin 14y ago
Not really, it's not actually bigger. Just taller, only 4" not 6.
- Tichy 14y ago
  They had to save some things for the iPhone 6.

jstalin 14y ago

The marginal improvements are diminishing...

joelrunyon 14y ago

When are these actually available?

ciniglio 14y ago
Sept 21st with preorders on sept 14
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

rdl 14y ago

Lack of NFC makes me sad, but I've been screwing around with Bluetooth 4.0 LE recently, and I think I can do basically all the things I want (in a closed ecosystem -- access control, digital leash, etc.) using 4.0 LE, and then use 2d barcodes on screen for interfacing to existing systems. It fails to mass transit, but I have a car. The main things I would have liked: * "geofencing" in some security-strong way to let a phone use a 4-digit pin when in home/office, and a longer PIN when outside the home/office. Could ninja this on Android I think (you'd do some kind of low-latency challenge-response on a LAN -- depending on the threat model, even 802.1X might be ok, but wouldn't resist an RF relay over a long tunnel...) * Biometric authentication on the device * Integrated credential management ("Passbook for Websites") where SSL client certs, passwords, or something got managed inside the secure element of the phone And, a real stretch, but a 128 or 256GB "pro" version of the phone, even if it cost 2x as much. Kill the iPod Classic.

bduerst 14y ago
Can you get bluetooth 4.0 to passively listen to active NFC signals?
- heartbreak 14y ago
  Unlikely. NFC operates around 13MHz, and Bluetooth is 2.4Ghz, I believe.
  - rdl 14y ago
    The least crazy thing old be an iPhone case which does NFC and talks bt 4.0 to the phone.
- heartbreak 14y ago
  Unlikely. NFC operates around 13MHz, and Bluetooth is 2.4Ghz, I believe.
- heartbreak 14y ago
  Unlikely. NFC operates around 13MHz, and Bluetooth is 2.4Ghz, I believe.

draz 14y ago

has anybody seen the pricing for this?? outrageous!! http://static.ips.apple.com.edgekey.net/ipa_preauth/content/catalog/en_US/index.html http://static.ips.apple.com.edgekey.net/ipa_preauth/content/... Look specifically at the data plans

pooriaazimi 14y ago
!!! Why is Verizon so popular in the U.S.? I see no (absolutely no) reason why someone should choose Verizon over Sprint... Verizon plans are about a hundred times more expensive.
- scdc 14y ago
  Coverage. Especially in the west.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    Sprint roams on VZ's network.
  - dsl 14y ago
    Sprint users get free access to Verizon's network until 2016.
    - tesseractive 14y ago
      I know they have a 3G agreement, but do they use Verizon's LTE network too? That makes a huge difference.
      - dsl 14y ago
        The agreement is technology agnostic. I had to escalate up a few times and after some persistance, got a call back from someone who was engineering level.
- slykat 14y ago

nikic 14y ago

I wanted to watch the video on the page, but it told me to install QuickTime. Yeah, sure...

upinsmoke 14y ago
No Silverlight I guess.

kmtrowbr 14y ago

This announcement plays into my theory that Apple will miss Steve Jobs a lot. It was very much a 'gradual improvement' -- and 'routine' announcement. A few missteps, from my perspective: * Apple Maps -- while this may prove good for mapping technology in the long run, I think the iPhone users will miss Google Maps quite a bit, for now. * Seemingly no fundamental improvement to Siri. "Conversational Searching" is the best way for Apple to bring the fight to Google, because this is the natural evolution of search. Why type queries into a search engine, when you can have a conversation with an AI instead? Google sees this danger and is developing Google Now, leaping ahead quickly. * No signs of trying to get into the emerging mobile payments battle. All in all I didn't get the feeling of a large vision being played out or of an arc of forward advance, but rather a feeling of slowing momentum.

morphir 14y ago

is the screen still made of glass that will shatter if you drop it to the ground? If glass, I hope they have managed to hardend it. Also I dont want those silly bands/rubber rings around the phone.

jdavid 14y ago

The Amazon Kindle HD press conference was more exciting. Kindle x-ray is an amazing feature, and the front lit display is really an achievement. I guess apple doesn't have the same fire to innovate that it used to. This might be proof that Patents don't spur innovation.

podperson 14y ago
Really? I found the pacing incredibly slow.
- jdavid 14y ago
  but the products were more innovative. Apple held back calling last year the iPhone 4S, the 5 because it wasn't good enough to bare the name, but this time there are hardly any core feature upgrades, and you get pulled further away from good google services. the iphone 5 is more about flashy hardware and dumping google than it is about wowing customers. the iphone 4s had a focusing lens, siri and was twice as fast as the iphone4. this phone really doesn't wow me at all.
  - podperson 14y ago
    How are the kindle products innovative? I guess the "white" page book reader is innovative in the sense of licensing a new generation of the e-ink tech (and I have to say it make the readers more attractive to me; I never liked the gray one gray displays), and the front-lighting is new and useful. Aside from that they're tablets with literally zero features we haven't seen before, indeed nothing over the iPad 3. Apple just needs to cut the iPad 3 price by 25% and they're not even compellingly cheap. The iPhone 5 may not wow you, but what does that matter? In general each iPhone generation has only really been compelling to owners of two year old iPhones. I thought the iPhone 4S was nice enough but hung onto my iPhone 4. I thought the 3GS looked nice, but held onto my 3G. (For contrast, I have an original Kindle Fire and the new Kindles do nothing for me. Indeed, having bought a Kindle Fire I probably won't buy another Amazon tablet because they're far more crippled than anything Apple has ever done. E.g. I can't read epubs on it.) The iPod Touch is a huge upgrade. It's literally an iPhone without the cellular plan (it has a 4S CPU, but an iPhone 5 screen).

te_chris 14y ago

There's a css bug for me on the carousel on chrome

podperson 14y ago

One of the things that impressed me (we'll see how well it works) is the panorama function. Plenty of cameras have a automatic panoramas but you'd be surprised how cruddy the results tend to be (often very low resolution). It looks like the panorama function generates very high resolution output.

zerohm 14y ago

Thinner, lighter, faster, better battery life, and it has a bigger screen. I will take these over NFC and wireless charging any day. Sometimes they are ahead in raw specs (screen ppi), sometimes they are behind (LTE), but everything they include, or don't include, is well thought out. (e.g., at the time of the 4s release 4G LTE phones suffered from terrible battery life)

bstewartnyc 14y ago

20% lighter - because that was a big problem lugging around that heavy iphone 4. slimmer - because that thick fat iphone 4 taking up way too much room in my pocket faster - because my iphone 4 is too slow? what I'd upgrade for: screen that is readable in direct sunlight or when wearing polarized sunglasses, camera that takes picture the instant I touch the button, better phone reception

pooriaazimi 14y ago
I think they said it now takes photos 40% faster (or so) than 4S. And that takes photos much faster than my 4.
jws 14y ago
20% lighter – Without exception, my $20 t-shirts wear out by failure of the fabric at the upper righthand corner of the pocket[1]. I get a little hole from keeping my iPhone in there. 20% lighter might save me a few t-shirts a year. camera that takes picture the instant I touch the button – sounds like you want the 40% faster image capture time. readable in direct sunlight or when wearing polarized sunglasses – yeah, me too. Still waiting on OLED to beat LCD. EOM [1] that wouldn't stop me from wearing them, but as soon as my wife sees the hole the shirt vanishes.

PhrosTT 14y ago

What percentage of people sitting on upgrades are now debating just switching to Android?

achompas 14y ago
Right here. No map directions, hardware failures (home button is dead after two years), and Android catching up in UI responsiveness and app availability means I'm looking at the upcoming Nexus phones more than this.
- clarky07 14y ago
  And here I have several friends with Android phones that are considering switching to the iPhone because of hardware failures and unresponsive UI's. (One of them has a broken keyboard and a broken GPS). I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. FWIW, there are map directions in iOS 6.
  - achompas 14y ago
    Interesting. Are any of them using Nexus devices? Also, I've heard repeatedly that iOS 6, and its new built-in Maps, lacks transit directions. Has that changed?
    - clarky07 14y ago
      they are using droids i think. i don't know about transit, but the parent just said "map directions" which i was guessing meant turn by turn. i was thinking there are third party apps with transit directions but i could be wrong about that.
vvhn 14y ago
i'm guessing the same number after iPhone 4S ?
jes5199 14y ago
I had to switch away from Android to iPhone because although there's a lot about Android I prefer, I need my basic apps to run without fucking crashing. I'm talking about sending sms being impossible because the stock SMS app crashes. Being unable to use Maps because typing in the blank caused it to crash. And the thing is, I suspect that there are good Android phones that don't have these problems, but several of my friends have phones from several different vendors that are nearly unusable. It's like a minefield - I want to buy my girlfriend a replacement for her mostly-broken Android phone, but I have no idea how to evaluate whether a given model will be a broken piece of shit. At least iPhone is a known quality - I miss having a decent Maps app, but at least it isn't broken.

kisstheblade 14y ago

Wireless charging, finally mainstream! Oh wait, they DIDN'T include it? At least I can take good pictures easily with it, you know just press the button no matter what you are doing. No? So this is just a CPU upgrade, wow! Probably a solid device, a little outdated camera and charging etc, but the apple hype is getting annoying. Every new device is tried to be sold off as the biggest thing ever. So what is better in the iphone5 than eg a lumia 920 except the "ecosystem" (appstore, millions of apps)? The lumia is better at least in these: - nfc - wireless charging - best camera phone after the 808 - great inbuilt free gps/navigation - excellent exchange and MS documents integration (important for business users, not so much for startup kid-wonders of course)

shayonj 14y ago

To sum it all up, were you really expecting Time travel? If so, move on; It's an amazing phone. At time times you need to take little small steps and a little moderate steps, to archive something big ;).

ComputerGuru 14y ago

I would argue the biggest thing to happen to the iPhone since the iPhone was the retina display, no?

navs 14y ago

Oh no a bigger screen. I for one am happy with the current screen size. Sure make it faster, slimmer but not wider and longer!

mtalantikite 14y ago

To talk about the software, I've been using Apple Maps in beta for the past couple of months, and having no transit directions while living in NYC is enough for me to consider a switch to android. Trying to take the subway to unfamiliar parts of the city forces me to use google maps in the browser. Addresses seem to be hit or miss -- I've often spent time searching for an establishment or address just to give up and use google maps in the browser. I've basically had to revert to how I got around the city prior to having a smartphone -- use my computer and remember how I need to get there before I leave. Apple Maps is potentially a huge fail for anyone living in a major city.

_rs 14y ago
Hopefully projects like this will fill the void. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/228865951/transit-app-for-ios-6-and-beyond http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/228865951/transit-app-fo...
- Spearchucker 14y ago
  Maps on my phone are crucial to me. The single most important feature is offline use - I often sit on the Underground (no Internet) going in the general direction of my meeting, but needing to know if/where I need to change lines, and then how to get from the tube station to the meeting location. So while this looks like it will fill a gap on iOS, it's something I'm unwilling to wait for.
mikek 14y ago
Hopefully Google releases a Google Maps app into the App Store, like they did with YouTube. Apple Maps looks like a major regression from Google Maps.
- brink 14y ago
  To me it would almost make sense for them to not add their google maps application so that it would make them, like mtalantikite consider switching to Android. I don't know why Google would have much of an incentive to improve iOS when it has it's own operating system to sell.

elorant 14y ago

I don't understand threads like this. What's at stake here, whether Apple is really innovative or not? Whether there should be more features on the phone? Well there aren't. Live with that. If you don't like the phone don't buy it, it's that simple.

skMed 14y ago

I'm seeing a lot of surprise by the lack of NFC, but given the lack of market adoption, I can understand why they may not take it as a high priority. Plus, we've all seen the reports of Apple purchasing AuthenTec and its IdAM solutions. Fingerprint + Passbook + NFC and they will have all the pieces in place to create the NFC market with aggressive merchant partnerships.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

slykat 14y ago

I was hoping for some discussion of the new OS and phone's impact on development instead of a Droid/iPhone flame war since I've just started developing my first iOS app. What's the biggest impact to iOS developers? The only one I can think of is a new aspect ratio. Update: Discussion on Quora: http://www.quora.com/iOS-Development/From-a-developers-perspective-what-new-and-interesting-features-and-notable-changes-are-in-the-iOS-6-SDK http://www.quora.com/iOS-Development/From-a-developers-persp...

codex_irl 14y ago

I have always been impressed by Apples products (I use them to earn a living after all) & was planning to upgrade my tired old iphone 3G to an iphone 5...but now I'm having second thoughts. When a friend handed me his S3 I immediately felt a little wow'd by the screen size, responsiveness & general look / feel of the phone, this new iphone does not look like it will give me the same "wow factor". I am extremely disappointed that Apple have not worked harder to improve the battery life, it has been & remains pathetic, primarily for this reason I will not be buying an iphone 5. Come on Apple, I want to give you my money - but please start putting some creative innovations back into your products, if you cannot do that then at least give us a phone with a battery which can last for a full / busy day.

clarky07 14y ago
i've never had any trouble with my battery life while i have friends with android phones that say the lte drains it in 1.5 hours. I'm not sure what you are hoping for, but i don't think switching from apple is going to help your battery life.
- codex_irl 14y ago
  My hope is a very simple one, I was hoping that I could buy a phone, charge it and that it would not run out of power within a few hours of heavy usage, my co-worker gets a full day of challenging battery use from his S3, which I have been a little more impressed with. Impressive screens & faster chips are all well and good but only if their is enough power in the dam thing to actually keep the device powered on.

superk 14y ago

I was watching the video: http://www.apple.com/iphone/#video http://www.apple.com/iphone/#video And at about 3:35 when they're showing the step-by-step driving directions and I was like WTF: Super attention to every detail, state-of-the-art everything, and then that scratchy godawful synthesized computer voice comes on and it's sounding slightly worse than my Amiga back in the 1980's... srsly Apple...

nodata 14y ago

There's a lot of defensive reactions on here. That's interesting. Where is the feature in this phone which makes you stop and think "wow, how did we not have this before?". There isn't one. That's not good. Apple set the stage for something revolutionary, and what they unveiled was not. It's boring. Again. Come on Apple.

badlogin443 14y ago

This changes everything, again.

DomKM 14y ago

http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/ Why aren't all bandwidths supported by a single GSM model? It seems odd that Apple would create one CDMA model and 2 GSM models, but I'm sure there's a technical/financial reason for that decision. Does anyone know what it is?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

cstrat 14y ago

There is one huge product flaw that will become apparent in about 2 months, it will begin on YouTube. Vertical video is about to get even worse.

uvTwitch 14y ago

What the fuck kind of retarded vertical resolution is 1136?!

zmmmmm 14y ago

Definitely an interative / evolutionary improvement - but I think they've done a substantial number of things across the board that make it a significant upgrade. I think it's a hard sell though because they have no new "headline" feature to talk about and most of the new things are already in competing forms in other phones, in many cases arguably better. With the 4s they had Siri, past generations had things like Facetime, etc. With this they've got to convince people to get excited about what looks like an incremental improvement, and worse, they have to start doing what they hate - talking about tech specs - the processor is "twice as fast", the phone is thinner, etc. Apple hates competing on tech specs because they know it just sets a bar for all the OEMs to jump over and commoditize the feature. But that is what they have to do with this phone.

kimmiller 14y ago

This iteration is for the masses, it's not for you. It's for my mother (who is taking one-on-one classes in an Apple store), it's for my partner who is just starting to get work done on her phone (she's had an iPhone 4 since they came out) and its for everybody that's just trying to understand mobile. Apple's network and ecosystem is now mature. Any change has to be so thoroughly considered. Anything at all risky (say NFC) gets binned until its proven because they can't upset what they have. Unfortunately this isn't about technology, it's about strategy.

bane 14y ago

I think the fact that this post is about to fall off the front page after less than a day says a lot. Even though it was flagged I still think this post had quite a bit to say http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510356 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510356 that's still relevant after the announcement.

andrewfelix 14y ago

Flagged. Because this is on just about every other news site in the world. This phone upgrade has minimal bearing on hackers.

tsahyt 14y ago

Someone has to do it: A cheap copy of the Goophone i5 we had here a couple of days ago!

gbraad 14y ago

"Bigger, thinner and lighter" as if it was a commercial for period stuff :-/