iPhone 5 specs, release date, and price

It's finally here. The fifth generation iPhone, aka iPhone 5, was officially announced yesterday and it's coming to the stores pretty soon. Let's look at some of the specs and features of the iPhone 5.

First of all, there were some major changes in the exterior specs. The iPhone 5 holds a 4 inch screen. Although it is still relatively a small screen compared to other smart phones, it is a big improvement for Apple as all the iPhones in the past always had 3.5 inch screen. Software wise, a fifth row for app icons on the home screen has been added due to the bigger screen. However, I discovered that the screen is not full HD because the total pixel count is 1,136 x 640 and that 640 line needs to be at least 720 pixels to be a full HD. I thought that was a bit of a disappointment. On top of the bigger screen, the iPhone 5 has gotten thinner from 0.37 inch to 0.30 inch and also got lighter and now weigh 3.95 ounces.

Design wise, you can see that the iPhone 5 has a metal back (again) instead of the glass back which caused some problems on iPhone 4 and 4S where people kept dropping it and it cracking. Apple also changed the color of the metal frame to dark navy ish color. The dock connector has gotten smaller as you all probably know by now and the audio jack was moved to the bottom which I thought was a little odd.

I know this was expected but the 4G LTE network will be available in addition to the GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, and HSPA data network that's currently available for the iPhone 5. The question is which carrier will support an LTE iPhone 5. In Australia, Telstra, Optus, and Virgin Mobile; in the US, AT&T, Spring, and Verizon Wireless; in Canada, Rogers, Bell, Telus, Fido, Virgin, and Kudo; in Asia, SoftBank, SmarTone, SingTel, SK Telecom; in Europe, Deutsche Telekom and EE. Carriers that do not support LTE will still be able to use the iPhone 5 but will have to run on dual-band 3.5G HDPA+.

Now let's move on to the inside of the iPhone 5. A faster chip, A6 vs the current A5 chip, was installed in the iPhone 5 and the chip will generate much faster speed in graphics yet being 22 percent smaller than the A5 chip. You will be able to see Web pages load 2.1 times faster and the Music app 1.9 times faster. The battery is much more powerful in order to accommodate the battery draining LTE. Battery life is always quite misleading but according to Apple, you will get 8 hours of 3G talk, 8 hours of 3G browsing, 8 hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video playback, 40 hours of music playback, and 225 hours of standby time.

One last thing, Apple decided to give a name to its camera, "iSight". Nothing really changed about the camera itself but they added a few handy features to it. The iSight has backside illumination, a hybrid IR filter, a five-element lens, and a f2.4 aperture. There is also the new dynamic light mode and you will be able to take pictures in panorama mode.


The iPhone 5 will be available in black and white version on September 21 to Australia, United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The phone will start selling in other countries by the end of this year. The phone will be available in 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and the 64GB for $399.

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