7 ms·

IPhone 5: Apple’s 16:9 compromise

33 points by ukdm 14y ago

digitalengineer 14y ago
"...These fixed ratios/resolutions are one of the main reasons for Apple’s strong app ecosystem." Oh right. Silly me thought is was the SDK, the link with iTunes, paid Apps, the link with Credit Cards, the high quality designs and what not.
- indiecore 14y ago
  >one of the
  - albemuth 14y ago
    >one of the main
    - bornhuetter 14y ago
      iOS developers frequently cite differing screen sizes/resolutions as a problem with Android app development (an issue of fragmentation).
      - huxley 14y ago
        The term fragmentation gets thrown around but its worth unpacking the rationale, because it becomes too simplistic as a epithet. When iOS developers talk about fragmentation they generally mean that it is hard to predict the target size (buttons and other UI elements), the layout of the screen, and the PPI in terms of generating screen elements. The iPhone 5's new screen does add another row to the matrix of iOS combinations, but Apple worked to minimize the impact on developers since they only added vertical pixels without changing the PPI or the target size relative to the iPhone 4/4s. So if you target the iPhone 5, the cell for screen size and number of pixels is different, but the PPI is the same as the iPhone 4/4s (and double the older iPhones) and target size is the exact same as all iPhones before it. If you want to build a Universal App (for both iPad and iPhones) you now need to think of 2 target sizes (for iPads and iPhones), 4 PPI (2x iPhone and 2x iPad), and 5 screen resolutions (iPhone 5, iPhone 4/4s, older iPhones, iPad1/2, new iPad). Before the iPhone 5, it was 2 target sizes, 4 PPI, and 4 screen resolutions. Before the Retina iPad, it was 2 target sizes, 3 PPI, and 3 screen resolutions. Before the iPhone 4/4s, it was 2 target sizes, 2 PPI, and 2 screen resolutions. And so on. Effectively developers who want to add iPhone 5 support only need to consider the extra vertical space without worrying that buttons are suddenly going to get too small or the balance of items on the layout will get stretched or squashed or oddly distributed (if you do some sort of auto-layout). If the iPad Mini comes along, it's widely believed that the resolution will likely match the iPad 2 but the target sizes will be the size matching the iPhone and PPI matching older iPhones. Again, keeping things relatively predictable by only changing some factors. The matrix of combinations is still manageable even when adding two different devices, whereas if you tried to create a similar matrix of combinations for Android, it would be gigantic. An Android developer might reply, well once the combinations get complicated enough, you just accept that nothing will stay consistent and just target some commonalities. And that may be perfectly fine. Is the Apple approach worth it? Not worrying about the combination matrix gives Android phone makers far more flexibility in form factors than Apple has. Apple has effectively entered into a contract with iOS developers that changes will be limited and Android developers are already used to having little control over target size, screen ratio, or resolution. When you think about it, the whole thing is a fascinating controlled experiment in different approaches to hardware and software development philosophies.
        digitalengineer 14y ago
        Thank you for the highly detailed comment!
        bornhuetter 14y ago
        > When you think about it, the whole thing is a fascinating controlled experiment in different approaches to hardware and software development philosophies. Indeed. I'm really curious to see how this pans out. The iOS approach is clearly easier for everyone in the short term, but it remains to be seen whether the Android's approach will give them a significant longer-term advantage. Pixel perfect fitting vs. Wide range of options, and ability for manufacturers to "mess with the formula"
myko 14y ago
> Will developers have to maintain multiple versions of each app, just like on Android? Apple has been very quiet on this matter. What? I've been an Android developer for years and never had to do this. I'm pretty sure it will be the same way on iOS as it is on Android - provide another layout (a different xib in this case) for the larger and smaller screens. Done.
- gardarh 14y ago
  I don't agree with you on that point. Android layouts are designed from the beginning to handle different screen sizes and proportions, pretty much like html. One of the iPhone's strong point has always been that you can design "pixel perfect" apps, so that your design is exactly what users see (as a contrast in Android you have to define "points of stretching" for your screens). The point here is that you have to create a new layout for the iPhone 5 (if you don't want your app letterboxed) and this adds an extra layer of complexity to the development. Seeing that there are also rumors about a different form factor iPad you would then have to maintain 6 different layouts (standard/retina/16:9 for iPhone, standard/retina/new layout iPad). Well or 12 if you have specific landscape layouts. Designing UI on Android apps can be a pain since you don't have the "pixel perfect" paradigm, which is a common criticism on Android from iPhone developers, but if you manage to get them right you can get away with a single xml layout (of course, you can able to make things more complicated). It seems to me that Apple are getting themselves in a bit of a mess with this. The tradeoffs with the "pixel perfect" method haven't really materialized until now. Maybe I'm just being over pessimistic with this and it will be a non-issue, I really can't tell at this point, but I see this as the greatest issue with the iPhone 5 (which in turn is probably the reason they didn't increase the screen size earlier).
  - _djo_ 14y ago
    While things are undoubtedly more complex for designers and developers than when there was just a standard 3.5" 320×480 163 ppi screen, a number of those layouts are transitionary. Just as developers slowly phase out support for older iOS versions (and by extension older devices), within a year or two it'll be possible to maintain only two layouts for the iPhone (retina 3.5" and 4"), two for the iPad (standard, retina) and one for the presumed iPad mini. In time they'll be able to abandon both the 3.5" retina and standard iPad layouts and revert back to just one iPhone layout, one iPad layout and one iPad mini layout (assuming that's a real product) as the older models become obsolete. It's not ideal, but it's still a relatively simple set of layouts that allow the 'pixel-perfect' method to continue working well.
saturdaysaint 14y ago
The article doesn't mention the updates to iOS 6, in dev hands for months, that allow for flexible layouts. I'd be surprised if any major 3rd party apps (Facebook Netflix Kindle Dropbox Spotify) weren't ready at launch. We'll see for games. But, really, iOS has survived far bigger transitions. I owned the first retina iPhone (4) at launch and apps were upgraded so quickly that I can barely remember using non-retina apps on it. Many early iPad adopters ran at least some upscaled iPhone apps on it for months while developers caught up to a vastly different medium - a hideous compromise compared to letterboxing. Was that even a speedbump on the iPad's rise to blockbuster status? So this strikes me as completely academic.
- fmkamchatka 14y ago
  The problem with the autolayout is that it only works on iOS6 devices, so developers still need to use the old way until they can drop ioS5 support. That being said it is very easy to support the new iPhone the old way.
s00pcan 14y ago
I really don't consider this a compromise; everyone else is pointlessly making screens larger in both directions that can't be used comfortably with one hand. The marketers just want to have that 4"+ screen on the feature list. Making the screen taller but keeping the same width was the best way of increasing the size but still keeping it usable.
- LaGrange 14y ago
  Actually, I doubt the additional row of icons makes a huge difference (though, maybe it does help videos), but I bet the additional space inside the phone is useful.
  - mongol 14y ago
    Good point!
  - evoxed 14y ago
    I just want to be able to read more text at a time... seems like every time I open an email or webpage, at any comfortable size I get less text than I can read in a few blinks. I won't know until it's in my hand, but the extra height and fullscreen Safari sound pretty great to me (also, more room for my hands to make those damn pinching motions– the tall and large communities will appreciate it).
bane 14y ago
"The end result, though, despite Apple’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, is a phone that is reactionary rather than revolutionary, or even evolutionary." I've been struggling with the right word to describe this update and "reactionary" hits the nail on the head. Almost everything this phone has, the competition has had for quite some time. It doesn't quite feel like catchup, with typical panache Apple has built a best-in-class phone design. But it just doesn't feel like something anybody wants to be chasing any more. Bigger picture, I'm not sure what this means for the smartphone ecosystem as a whole w.r.t. innovation. The heat of competition feels like it's finally let off.
- iProject 14y ago
  > doesn't feel like something anybody wants to be chasing any more A reasonable speculation. Of course the best data will take a while to become available. The one data point (showing in headlines this morning) is that, judging that it took only 1 hour for iP5 shipping time to move back from 1 week to 2 weeks, this phone is selling several times as fast as any iPhone predecessor. Apparently some body is "chasing it."
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    Just because something sells well doesn't tell us everything. It's a good data point though. http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240080531/Windows-Vista-sales-outstrip-XP-launch http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240080531/Windows-Vista-...
- bradleyland 14y ago
  Even the very first iPhone was "reactionary". It wasn't a class leader if you're looking at it from a bulleted-list perspective. The first iPhone was EDGE only at a time when everyone was clammmoring for 3G phones, and it wouldn't run third-party apps. Many feature phones can run third-party apps; albeit crappy ones. The iPhone couldn't run third-party apps for a full year after its release. Talk about reactionary! The tech press does the same thing every time a new iPhone is released. They look at it on paper and say dumb things like: > Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone 5 is a beautiful phone, and in true Apple fashion its design and construction are probably second to none… but is that really enough? So, there is no other phone that can beat its design and construction, but "is it enough"? Is being the best enough? That has to go down as one of the dumbest, most contradictory rhetorical questions in history. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Consumers don't care about implementation details. They care about the experience, and year after year, Apple delivers the best experience (proved by JD Power's smartphone satisfaction results).
jeffehobbs 14y ago
My understanding is that if the dev is using standard Interface Builder UITableView elements, it's a pretty easy transition. If your whole UI is non-standard, like a game UI for example, yeah, there's going to be some slight pain if you want to allot for the additional screen space. But come on, it's not that bad, this article is hyperbolic.
- RMacy 14y ago
  Totally concur. It's gotten to the point where there isn't an obvious amount of features/changes to be done.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- markmm 14y ago
  has the width changed? or just the height? If it's just eh height most apps will work as the view will just stretch.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
    Nope. Same width, same PPI. A lot of apps (particularly scrolling list/view apps) will need barely anything changing.
halfwit 14y ago
Apple can't win with pundits like this one. While the display was 3.5" the iPhone was supposedly lagging Android devices, and now that it's 4", it's a train wreck and they're just copy-catting Android OEMs. Jeez.
bornhuetter 14y ago
The whole idea of there being one single perfect phone size is nonsense. I'm 6'3", with large hands, so I can quite comfortably use a 4.5"+ screen. My Asian wife has much smaller hands, so would struggle with anything bigger than 4"-4.5" (that's what she said). Different people are going to prefer different phone sizes.
- markmm 14y ago
  Lucky she's married to you then eh? Sorry couldn't resist
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
huxley 14y ago
I know there are pressures to get an article --any article-- out there, but the linkbaiting and trolling (on both pro- and con) is going off-the-charts with the iPhone 5. I really should have stuck to my guns and ignored all the articles until 2 or 3 weeks pass by and we're dealing more with hard facts, less with tea-leaves and parsing every sentence that Apple staff said (or failed to say).
mbell 14y ago
"...under delivers on the hardware specification" What was under delivered on? Are people really this upset about NFC?
- jdechko 14y ago
  Agreed. People keep comparing the device to the Nokia 920, but nobody has had some good hands-on time with either device. NFC might be a nice feature to have, but there's very little infrastructure in place to support it. Wireless charging is cool, but I'm not sure it's much more than a gimmick at this point? What's a use case for wireless charging where it's more practical than plugging in? On paper the 920 has the "better" camera than the iPhone 5, but the sample photos from the 920 were faked. Even if the iPhone 5 isn't quite as good, it's still going to be a top 5 camera. Fortunately, we live in a time where smartphones are developing at a very rapid pace. And we as consumers have some really great options. You might have to make some compromises, but not many.
- bane 14y ago
  I agree, the hardware specs are fine. Nothing to get excited about, but that's rarely been the thrust of iPhone's appeal anyway (outside of perhaps the retina display). I think the phoned in industrial design is the problem. "Let's make it a bit taller and take the glass off the back" is simply not the improvement in industrial design from one generation to the next that might be expected: bezel-less - http://static.droidblog.net/dgstorm/df/bezel-free-folded-samsung-smartphone-mockup.png http://static.droidblog.net/dgstorm/df/bezel-free-folded-sam... flexible screens - http://homeklondike.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1-concept-smartphone-fluid-by-philips.jpg http://homeklondike.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1-concept... pixel-qi style display 1ms touchscreen response full color touch sensitive display projector - http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2012/03/ufo_smartphone_concept_design_1.jpg http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2012/03/ufo_smartphone_concept_... any one of these things (done in the typically well designed Apple way) would have been worth a full number update on the phone. Here's an entire gallery of ideas https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+design+concepts&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=T2VTUN-3Asbi0QHnwoCAAw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1120&bih=642 https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+design+concepts&... but what was launched just feels like refinement and not imagination
adsr 14y ago
I've got the impression that most of the phone internals has been updated. I prefer that to cosmetic design changes for it's own sake and gimmick features that isn't yet established and/or used by many. I like what Apple bring with it's media expertise and the added hardware image processing and panorama photo.
Bud 14y ago
A silly, trivial article with major errors or questionable fudges in basically every paragraph. The writer says the phone can be summed up by an extra row of home icons; there are in fact improvements to many hardware and software facets of the device. One may not think the improvements are major, but denying their existence temporarily to make an argument is silliness. He then gripes for two paragraphs about his own personal impressions about how Apple presents products, including one paragraph griping about a guy who is now dead, and thus presumably not responsible for the presentation in question, i.e., the iPhone 5 presentation. In the next paragraph, more whining about presentation, plus a blatant lie, saying "Apple tried to convince us that it had stolen a 16:9 display from the gods". Apple did no such thing. I watched the entire 2-hour event. There is not a single boast about Apple magically creating 16:9, originating 16:9, or any other such nonsense. In fact, 16:9 was barely mentioned. At all. The writer is simply making it up. Then griping about a Jony Ive video. Then silliness about how "Thin and light smartphones were an exciting concept a couple of years ago"; perhaps the writer hasn't noticed, but thin and light has ALWAYS been a driving concept in smartphones and basically every other kind of portable (and even non-portable) tech design. It has always been an issue and will always be an issue. So when someone makes something circa 20% thinner and lighter, yes, that is noteworthy. It will not change the course of planetary history single-handedly, but it is notable. He then lies about the hardware, saying that "you would be hard stretched to find any new features except for the single-chip GSM/CDMA/LTE radio". But that's not true either. The CPU is reported to use A15 cores, which would make Apple first to market, but all the writer can do about that is boast of some vaporware product using the A15. The writer ignores the camera upgrades, the speaker upgrade, addition of an extra mic, etc., etc. Later in the article, he gets the software wrong too, talking about how iOS will use the additional screen space: "Rather than do something interesting with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps". That's already untrue; Apple has already redesigned the OS and its own apps to do interesting things with that space, and third parties who make major apps will of course do full redesigns in most cases too. The author then makes a hilariously bad statement about why Apple made the phone thinner: "It seems like Apple felt compelled to increase the iPhone’s screen size, but at the same time it couldn’t summon up the marketing cojones to introduce a phone that was both larger and heavier than the iPhone 4S." Yeah, that's right. The author is actually saying that the phone is lighter and thinner because of Apple's lack of "marketing cojones". It's just hilariously bad writing and control of the facts, all the way through.
cs702 14y ago
The entire iOS app ecosystem has been built upon the idea of 'pixel perfection,' and now this historical focus on perfection has ironically put many, and perhaps most, iOS developers in the position of having to modify their apps to support a growing variety of specific-to-the-pixel screen resolutions. In the interim, users have to put up with ugly artifacts like black bars and up-sampled graphics. -- PS. The Android team's decision to provide from early on a resolution-independent GUI framework that automatically uses all screen real estate, regardless of resolution or aspect ratio, is looking smarter by the day.
- emp 14y ago
  I think "pixel perfect" refers to matching a designer's visual design. iOS developers should have been using the layout constraints for most of the UI - if they have hardcoded values, then that is bad programming. For apps that use a lot of UI graphics in the form of images, yes they have work to do. But the same would be true on Android.
- adsr 14y ago
  How is that working exactly? If you are using custom graphics it needs to be stretched to fit a larger screen, or letter boxed to keep it's original ratio. If you are using nothing by standard UI elements it will adapt to the screen.
  - baconner 14y ago
    First there's a good set of flexible layout controls to build ui that'll position / size elements to the available screen real estate. So you can build screens that position elements fairly well on different resolutions. Second you can make multiple versions of these layouts that'll swap in given some device parameters. So if the flexible layouts didn't suit your need you could make (for example) one for tablets, one for phones. You can do the same for bitmaps so you can have different versions of each for different DPIs. For bitmap aspect ratio issues there are also 9patch bitmaps which specify which portions of the image can be stretched and which can't. That works pretty well for small adjustments and background images.
- 14y ago
andrethegiant 14y ago
"Rather than do something interesting with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps — all 700,000 of them in the App Store. If you can believe it, you will actually get black bars at the top and bottom of the screen." Please. What else would you do besides letterboxing? Stretch the content in the y direction? That would look terrible. Implement some cool new feature that lives inside the new screen real estate? Then devs wouldn't want to upgrade their apps to support the iPhone 5 ratio. Letterboxing is for backwards-compatibility, but the author makes it sound like Apple can't think of anything creative to fill that space. And because the screen dimension change is only in one direction, developers will have an easier time modifying their app layouts.
- Someone 14y ago
  "What else would you do besides letterboxing?" Show ads :-) The only slightly useful thing I can think of is that they could permanently show the app switcher, but I am not even sure that is a good idea. It probably would make it too easy to jump out of an app.

33 points by ukdm 14y ago

"...These fixed ratios/resolutions are one of the main reasons for Apple’s strong app ecosystem." Oh right. Silly me thought is was the SDK, the link with iTunes, paid Apps, the link with Credit Cards, the high quality designs and what not.

indiecore 14y ago
>one of the
- albemuth 14y ago
  >one of the main
  - bornhuetter 14y ago
    iOS developers frequently cite differing screen sizes/resolutions as a problem with Android app development (an issue of fragmentation).
    - huxley 14y ago
      The term fragmentation gets thrown around but its worth unpacking the rationale, because it becomes too simplistic as a epithet. When iOS developers talk about fragmentation they generally mean that it is hard to predict the target size (buttons and other UI elements), the layout of the screen, and the PPI in terms of generating screen elements. The iPhone 5's new screen does add another row to the matrix of iOS combinations, but Apple worked to minimize the impact on developers since they only added vertical pixels without changing the PPI or the target size relative to the iPhone 4/4s. So if you target the iPhone 5, the cell for screen size and number of pixels is different, but the PPI is the same as the iPhone 4/4s (and double the older iPhones) and target size is the exact same as all iPhones before it. If you want to build a Universal App (for both iPad and iPhones) you now need to think of 2 target sizes (for iPads and iPhones), 4 PPI (2x iPhone and 2x iPad), and 5 screen resolutions (iPhone 5, iPhone 4/4s, older iPhones, iPad1/2, new iPad). Before the iPhone 5, it was 2 target sizes, 4 PPI, and 4 screen resolutions. Before the Retina iPad, it was 2 target sizes, 3 PPI, and 3 screen resolutions. Before the iPhone 4/4s, it was 2 target sizes, 2 PPI, and 2 screen resolutions. And so on. Effectively developers who want to add iPhone 5 support only need to consider the extra vertical space without worrying that buttons are suddenly going to get too small or the balance of items on the layout will get stretched or squashed or oddly distributed (if you do some sort of auto-layout). If the iPad Mini comes along, it's widely believed that the resolution will likely match the iPad 2 but the target sizes will be the size matching the iPhone and PPI matching older iPhones. Again, keeping things relatively predictable by only changing some factors. The matrix of combinations is still manageable even when adding two different devices, whereas if you tried to create a similar matrix of combinations for Android, it would be gigantic. An Android developer might reply, well once the combinations get complicated enough, you just accept that nothing will stay consistent and just target some commonalities. And that may be perfectly fine. Is the Apple approach worth it? Not worrying about the combination matrix gives Android phone makers far more flexibility in form factors than Apple has. Apple has effectively entered into a contract with iOS developers that changes will be limited and Android developers are already used to having little control over target size, screen ratio, or resolution. When you think about it, the whole thing is a fascinating controlled experiment in different approaches to hardware and software development philosophies.
      - digitalengineer 14y ago
        Thank you for the highly detailed comment!
      - bornhuetter 14y ago
        > When you think about it, the whole thing is a fascinating controlled experiment in different approaches to hardware and software development philosophies. Indeed. I'm really curious to see how this pans out. The iOS approach is clearly easier for everyone in the short term, but it remains to be seen whether the Android's approach will give them a significant longer-term advantage. Pixel perfect fitting vs. Wide range of options, and ability for manufacturers to "mess with the formula"

myko 14y ago

> Will developers have to maintain multiple versions of each app, just like on Android? Apple has been very quiet on this matter. What? I've been an Android developer for years and never had to do this. I'm pretty sure it will be the same way on iOS as it is on Android - provide another layout (a different xib in this case) for the larger and smaller screens. Done.

gardarh 14y ago
I don't agree with you on that point. Android layouts are designed from the beginning to handle different screen sizes and proportions, pretty much like html. One of the iPhone's strong point has always been that you can design "pixel perfect" apps, so that your design is exactly what users see (as a contrast in Android you have to define "points of stretching" for your screens). The point here is that you have to create a new layout for the iPhone 5 (if you don't want your app letterboxed) and this adds an extra layer of complexity to the development. Seeing that there are also rumors about a different form factor iPad you would then have to maintain 6 different layouts (standard/retina/16:9 for iPhone, standard/retina/new layout iPad). Well or 12 if you have specific landscape layouts. Designing UI on Android apps can be a pain since you don't have the "pixel perfect" paradigm, which is a common criticism on Android from iPhone developers, but if you manage to get them right you can get away with a single xml layout (of course, you can able to make things more complicated). It seems to me that Apple are getting themselves in a bit of a mess with this. The tradeoffs with the "pixel perfect" method haven't really materialized until now. Maybe I'm just being over pessimistic with this and it will be a non-issue, I really can't tell at this point, but I see this as the greatest issue with the iPhone 5 (which in turn is probably the reason they didn't increase the screen size earlier).
- _djo_ 14y ago
  While things are undoubtedly more complex for designers and developers than when there was just a standard 3.5" 320×480 163 ppi screen, a number of those layouts are transitionary. Just as developers slowly phase out support for older iOS versions (and by extension older devices), within a year or two it'll be possible to maintain only two layouts for the iPhone (retina 3.5" and 4"), two for the iPad (standard, retina) and one for the presumed iPad mini. In time they'll be able to abandon both the 3.5" retina and standard iPad layouts and revert back to just one iPhone layout, one iPad layout and one iPad mini layout (assuming that's a real product) as the older models become obsolete. It's not ideal, but it's still a relatively simple set of layouts that allow the 'pixel-perfect' method to continue working well.

saturdaysaint 14y ago

The article doesn't mention the updates to iOS 6, in dev hands for months, that allow for flexible layouts. I'd be surprised if any major 3rd party apps (Facebook Netflix Kindle Dropbox Spotify) weren't ready at launch. We'll see for games. But, really, iOS has survived far bigger transitions. I owned the first retina iPhone (4) at launch and apps were upgraded so quickly that I can barely remember using non-retina apps on it. Many early iPad adopters ran at least some upscaled iPhone apps on it for months while developers caught up to a vastly different medium - a hideous compromise compared to letterboxing. Was that even a speedbump on the iPad's rise to blockbuster status? So this strikes me as completely academic.

fmkamchatka 14y ago
The problem with the autolayout is that it only works on iOS6 devices, so developers still need to use the old way until they can drop ioS5 support. That being said it is very easy to support the new iPhone the old way.

s00pcan 14y ago

I really don't consider this a compromise; everyone else is pointlessly making screens larger in both directions that can't be used comfortably with one hand. The marketers just want to have that 4"+ screen on the feature list. Making the screen taller but keeping the same width was the best way of increasing the size but still keeping it usable.

LaGrange 14y ago
Actually, I doubt the additional row of icons makes a huge difference (though, maybe it does help videos), but I bet the additional space inside the phone is useful.
- mongol 14y ago
  Good point!
- evoxed 14y ago
  I just want to be able to read more text at a time... seems like every time I open an email or webpage, at any comfortable size I get less text than I can read in a few blinks. I won't know until it's in my hand, but the extra height and fullscreen Safari sound pretty great to me (also, more room for my hands to make those damn pinching motions– the tall and large communities will appreciate it).

bane 14y ago

"The end result, though, despite Apple’s best efforts to convince us otherwise, is a phone that is reactionary rather than revolutionary, or even evolutionary." I've been struggling with the right word to describe this update and "reactionary" hits the nail on the head. Almost everything this phone has, the competition has had for quite some time. It doesn't quite feel like catchup, with typical panache Apple has built a best-in-class phone design. But it just doesn't feel like something anybody wants to be chasing any more. Bigger picture, I'm not sure what this means for the smartphone ecosystem as a whole w.r.t. innovation. The heat of competition feels like it's finally let off.

iProject 14y ago
> doesn't feel like something anybody wants to be chasing any more A reasonable speculation. Of course the best data will take a while to become available. The one data point (showing in headlines this morning) is that, judging that it took only 1 hour for iP5 shipping time to move back from 1 week to 2 weeks, this phone is selling several times as fast as any iPhone predecessor. Apparently some body is "chasing it."
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Just because something sells well doesn't tell us everything. It's a good data point though. http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240080531/Windows-Vista-sales-outstrip-XP-launch http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240080531/Windows-Vista-...
bradleyland 14y ago
Even the very first iPhone was "reactionary". It wasn't a class leader if you're looking at it from a bulleted-list perspective. The first iPhone was EDGE only at a time when everyone was clammmoring for 3G phones, and it wouldn't run third-party apps. Many feature phones can run third-party apps; albeit crappy ones. The iPhone couldn't run third-party apps for a full year after its release. Talk about reactionary! The tech press does the same thing every time a new iPhone is released. They look at it on paper and say dumb things like: > Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone 5 is a beautiful phone, and in true Apple fashion its design and construction are probably second to none… but is that really enough? So, there is no other phone that can beat its design and construction, but "is it enough"? Is being the best enough? That has to go down as one of the dumbest, most contradictory rhetorical questions in history. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Consumers don't care about implementation details. They care about the experience, and year after year, Apple delivers the best experience (proved by JD Power's smartphone satisfaction results).

jeffehobbs 14y ago

My understanding is that if the dev is using standard Interface Builder UITableView elements, it's a pretty easy transition. If your whole UI is non-standard, like a game UI for example, yeah, there's going to be some slight pain if you want to allot for the additional screen space. But come on, it's not that bad, this article is hyperbolic.

RMacy 14y ago
Totally concur. It's gotten to the point where there isn't an obvious amount of features/changes to be done.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
markmm 14y ago
has the width changed? or just the height? If it's just eh height most apps will work as the view will just stretch.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  Nope. Same width, same PPI. A lot of apps (particularly scrolling list/view apps) will need barely anything changing.

halfwit 14y ago

Apple can't win with pundits like this one. While the display was 3.5" the iPhone was supposedly lagging Android devices, and now that it's 4", it's a train wreck and they're just copy-catting Android OEMs. Jeez.

bornhuetter 14y ago

The whole idea of there being one single perfect phone size is nonsense. I'm 6'3", with large hands, so I can quite comfortably use a 4.5"+ screen. My Asian wife has much smaller hands, so would struggle with anything bigger than 4"-4.5" (that's what she said). Different people are going to prefer different phone sizes.

markmm 14y ago
Lucky she's married to you then eh? Sorry couldn't resist

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

huxley 14y ago

I know there are pressures to get an article --any article-- out there, but the linkbaiting and trolling (on both pro- and con) is going off-the-charts with the iPhone 5. I really should have stuck to my guns and ignored all the articles until 2 or 3 weeks pass by and we're dealing more with hard facts, less with tea-leaves and parsing every sentence that Apple staff said (or failed to say).

mbell 14y ago

"...under delivers on the hardware specification" What was under delivered on? Are people really this upset about NFC?

jdechko 14y ago
Agreed. People keep comparing the device to the Nokia 920, but nobody has had some good hands-on time with either device. NFC might be a nice feature to have, but there's very little infrastructure in place to support it. Wireless charging is cool, but I'm not sure it's much more than a gimmick at this point? What's a use case for wireless charging where it's more practical than plugging in? On paper the 920 has the "better" camera than the iPhone 5, but the sample photos from the 920 were faked. Even if the iPhone 5 isn't quite as good, it's still going to be a top 5 camera. Fortunately, we live in a time where smartphones are developing at a very rapid pace. And we as consumers have some really great options. You might have to make some compromises, but not many.
bane 14y ago
I agree, the hardware specs are fine. Nothing to get excited about, but that's rarely been the thrust of iPhone's appeal anyway (outside of perhaps the retina display). I think the phoned in industrial design is the problem. "Let's make it a bit taller and take the glass off the back" is simply not the improvement in industrial design from one generation to the next that might be expected: bezel-less - http://static.droidblog.net/dgstorm/df/bezel-free-folded-samsung-smartphone-mockup.png http://static.droidblog.net/dgstorm/df/bezel-free-folded-sam... flexible screens - http://homeklondike.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1-concept-smartphone-fluid-by-philips.jpg http://homeklondike.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1-concept... pixel-qi style display 1ms touchscreen response full color touch sensitive display projector - http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2012/03/ufo_smartphone_concept_design_1.jpg http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2012/03/ufo_smartphone_concept_... any one of these things (done in the typically well designed Apple way) would have been worth a full number update on the phone. Here's an entire gallery of ideas https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+design+concepts&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=T2VTUN-3Asbi0QHnwoCAAw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1120&bih=642 https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+design+concepts&... but what was launched just feels like refinement and not imagination

adsr 14y ago

I've got the impression that most of the phone internals has been updated. I prefer that to cosmetic design changes for it's own sake and gimmick features that isn't yet established and/or used by many. I like what Apple bring with it's media expertise and the added hardware image processing and panorama photo.

Bud 14y ago

A silly, trivial article with major errors or questionable fudges in basically every paragraph. The writer says the phone can be summed up by an extra row of home icons; there are in fact improvements to many hardware and software facets of the device. One may not think the improvements are major, but denying their existence temporarily to make an argument is silliness. He then gripes for two paragraphs about his own personal impressions about how Apple presents products, including one paragraph griping about a guy who is now dead, and thus presumably not responsible for the presentation in question, i.e., the iPhone 5 presentation. In the next paragraph, more whining about presentation, plus a blatant lie, saying "Apple tried to convince us that it had stolen a 16:9 display from the gods". Apple did no such thing. I watched the entire 2-hour event. There is not a single boast about Apple magically creating 16:9, originating 16:9, or any other such nonsense. In fact, 16:9 was barely mentioned. At all. The writer is simply making it up. Then griping about a Jony Ive video. Then silliness about how "Thin and light smartphones were an exciting concept a couple of years ago"; perhaps the writer hasn't noticed, but thin and light has ALWAYS been a driving concept in smartphones and basically every other kind of portable (and even non-portable) tech design. It has always been an issue and will always be an issue. So when someone makes something circa 20% thinner and lighter, yes, that is noteworthy. It will not change the course of planetary history single-handedly, but it is notable. He then lies about the hardware, saying that "you would be hard stretched to find any new features except for the single-chip GSM/CDMA/LTE radio". But that's not true either. The CPU is reported to use A15 cores, which would make Apple first to market, but all the writer can do about that is boast of some vaporware product using the A15. The writer ignores the camera upgrades, the speaker upgrade, addition of an extra mic, etc., etc. Later in the article, he gets the software wrong too, talking about how iOS will use the additional screen space: "Rather than do something interesting with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps". That's already untrue; Apple has already redesigned the OS and its own apps to do interesting things with that space, and third parties who make major apps will of course do full redesigns in most cases too. The author then makes a hilariously bad statement about why Apple made the phone thinner: "It seems like Apple felt compelled to increase the iPhone’s screen size, but at the same time it couldn’t summon up the marketing cojones to introduce a phone that was both larger and heavier than the iPhone 4S." Yeah, that's right. The author is actually saying that the phone is lighter and thinner because of Apple's lack of "marketing cojones". It's just hilariously bad writing and control of the facts, all the way through.

cs702 14y ago

The entire iOS app ecosystem has been built upon the idea of 'pixel perfection,' and now this historical focus on perfection has ironically put many, and perhaps most, iOS developers in the position of having to modify their apps to support a growing variety of specific-to-the-pixel screen resolutions. In the interim, users have to put up with ugly artifacts like black bars and up-sampled graphics. -- PS. The Android team's decision to provide from early on a resolution-independent GUI framework that automatically uses all screen real estate, regardless of resolution or aspect ratio, is looking smarter by the day.

emp 14y ago
I think "pixel perfect" refers to matching a designer's visual design. iOS developers should have been using the layout constraints for most of the UI - if they have hardcoded values, then that is bad programming. For apps that use a lot of UI graphics in the form of images, yes they have work to do. But the same would be true on Android.
adsr 14y ago
How is that working exactly? If you are using custom graphics it needs to be stretched to fit a larger screen, or letter boxed to keep it's original ratio. If you are using nothing by standard UI elements it will adapt to the screen.
- baconner 14y ago
  First there's a good set of flexible layout controls to build ui that'll position / size elements to the available screen real estate. So you can build screens that position elements fairly well on different resolutions. Second you can make multiple versions of these layouts that'll swap in given some device parameters. So if the flexible layouts didn't suit your need you could make (for example) one for tablets, one for phones. You can do the same for bitmaps so you can have different versions of each for different DPIs. For bitmap aspect ratio issues there are also 9patch bitmaps which specify which portions of the image can be stretched and which can't. That works pretty well for small adjustments and background images.
14y ago

andrethegiant 14y ago

"Rather than do something interesting with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps — all 700,000 of them in the App Store. If you can believe it, you will actually get black bars at the top and bottom of the screen." Please. What else would you do besides letterboxing? Stretch the content in the y direction? That would look terrible. Implement some cool new feature that lives inside the new screen real estate? Then devs wouldn't want to upgrade their apps to support the iPhone 5 ratio. Letterboxing is for backwards-compatibility, but the author makes it sound like Apple can't think of anything creative to fill that space. And because the screen dimension change is only in one direction, developers will have an easier time modifying their app layouts.

Someone 14y ago
"What else would you do besides letterboxing?" Show ads :-) The only slightly useful thing I can think of is that they could permanently show the app switcher, but I am not even sure that is a good idea. It probably would make it too easy to jump out of an app.