Iphone 5

The iPhone 5 Scores Well, With a Quibble

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Apple announced the iPhone 5, the latest version of its smartphone, at an event in San Francisco last week.
By DAVID POGUEPublished: September 18, 2012
If you were taking a college course called iPhone 101, your professor might identify three factors that have made Apple’s smartphone a mega-success.
First, design. Asingle company, known for its obsession over details, produces both the hardware and the software. The result is a single, coherently designed whole.
Second, superior components. As the world’slargest tech company, Apple can call the shots with its part suppliers. It can often incorporate new technologies — scratch-resistant Gorilla glass, say, or the supersharp Retina screen — before itsrivals can.
Third, compatibility. The iPhone’s ubiquity has led to a universe of accessories that fit it. Walk into a hotel room, and there’s probably an iPhone connector built into the alarm clock.
Ifyou had to write a term paper for this course, you might open with this argument: that in creating the new iPhone 5 ($200 with contract), Apple strengthened its first two advantages — but handed itsrivals the third one on a silver platter.
Let’s start with design. The new phone, in all black or white, is beautiful. Especially the black one, whose gleaming, black-on-black, glass-and-aluminumbody carries the design cues of a Stealth bomber. The rumors ran rampant that the iPhone 5 would have a larger screen. Would it be huge, like many Android phones? Those giant screens are thudding slabsin your pocket, but they’re fantastic for maps, books, Web sites, photos and movies.
As it turns out, the new iPhone’s updated footprint (handprint?) is nothing like the Imax size of its rivals. It’sthe same 2.3 inches wide, but its screen has grown taller by half an inch — 176 very tiny pixels.
It’s a nice but not life-changing change. You gain an extra row of icons on the Home screen, more...