“Apple Inc.’s iPhone has been a trendsetter for half a decade. Now the question is whether it can avoid becoming a bore,” Jessica E. Vascellaro reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“On Wednesday, Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, packed with new features. The phone is thinner and has a bigger display. Its Siri virtual assistant has grown much more powerful. It has a new mapping and digital coupon service,” Vascellaro reports. “Yet no one heralded the new device as a great leap forward. What’s more, several features that are becoming standard across other smartphones aren’t in the iPhone 5. Many of those features, such as even bigger screens and ways to pay with your phone, are generating strong reviews from consumers and technology reviewers.”
Vascellaro reports, “Whether the missing features matter remains to be seen. Consumers worldwide have eagerly snapped up incrementally different versions of the iPhone in the past. Still, the technology gaps are getting more attention.”
Here’s a sampling of what the iPhone 5 is missing:
• Digital Payments
• Touch to Share
• Dynamic Home Screens
• Face Unlock
• Even Bigger Screens
• Wireless charging
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The screen is the right size and aspect ratio. It’s designed that way after much careful thought, not to get a check mark on a spec sheet shootout.
The iPhone 5 simply does things no other so-called smartphone can do. Things that aren’t goofy, let’s-do-it-just-to-say-we-can-do-it junk that are either not ready for prime time or gimmicky (wireless charging: don’t forget your stupid ass charging pillow which you have to – drumroll – plug in), but useful items that users will use often (and often take for granted): Siri, Passbook, the best smartphone camera and microphone system available, iCloud, Shared Photo Streams, iTunes in the Cloud, in-cell touchscreen, unibody construction, a huge third-party ecosystem, the most apps and the better versions by far overall vs. the ports for which the others settle, FaceTime, etc., etc., etc.
What every spec sheet misses: Apple’s tight integration. Hardware + Software working in conjunction with each other. Not off-the-shelf parts cobbled together by one outfit with a one-size-fits-all OS dumped in from some other company operating outside of its core competency. Apple offers unified seamless quality vs. a fragmented free-for-all.
iPhone 5 will break all smartphone sales records – just like every single iPhone model before it.
Related article:
Apple introduces iPhone 5 – September 12, 2012
If you’re saying that they lacked on new features and major design leaps, think about how huge a leap the iPhone 4 was but was it not just the same advances from the 3GS as the 5 is to the 4s? It had a body change (yeah sure the 5’s is a bit more subtle but still extremely significant considering it’s change to the screen size) , it had a new camera in the front and back (so does the 5), it had a faster processesor (so does the 5), other than that it was just faster and better which is again the same with the iPhone five. The rest of it was software, just like the iPhone 5. I would say this is just as revolutionary as the iPhone 4 if not more.
Wireless charging is inefficient and wasteful in that it uses a lot of electrisity.
Not to mention the health issues.
Face unlock? Dynamic what now? What a fucking idiot.
• Digital Payments – Don’t need it
• Touch to Share – Don’t want it. I use email
• Dynamic Home Screens – No thanks
• Face Unlock – Useless android crap
• Even Bigger Screens – you’re kidding!!
• Wireless charging – yeah, like a cord is a hassle!
Its hardly boring, yet I am disappointed that they didn’t wow us as they normally do. I mean the phone was leaked all over the net for months and most expected it was a trick, a marketing ploy and slight of hand.
Honestly, this was one even that could have been phoned in given the main event in the ring was already outed. The new iPod Touches and iPod Nano’s are sweet, although I was bummed they went bigger with touch again on the Nano so the watch idea is dead.
Somebody shoot me; you fan boys will drool over anything white (chrome nowadays) with an Apple logo on it. It’s faster, thinner, lighter, and yep – more of the same. It doesn’t take much to make a phone faster – all they do is throw in the latest CPU and bam, it’s new. It’s as if I put a new hard drive in my computer and said it was a brand new PC. The iPhone 5 is a updated iPhone 4, and that’s all that it is. I remember when iPhone 4 first came out, and it was a drastic change – the phone looked sleeker, with a better build quality, and reflected the simple, gorgeous look that Apple was known for. Even I wanted it; Apple was interesting, its products compelling to me enough to really want to shell out the obscene amount of cash for one of their products. Now they’ve made their now-flagship device gunmetal black, with an obnoxious length. Apple used to innovate, lead the industry, and now it seems like all they’re doing is “catching up”. Yes, I want practical, but isn’t your slogan (or was) “Think different”?
By the way, the iPad Mini sucks as well. There’s ANOTHER screen size you’ll have to accommodate for. In before “cool story bro/tl;dr/related”.
You are a bit late to this party. This was posted in September.
In any case, the only thing that is the same between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5 is the appearance of a metal band around the outside. I say “appearance” because the sides and back are now a single piece. It would be like say your new Dell mini-tower isn’t new because they didn’t pack all the new innards in a triangular case.
You key in on the one exterior design cue meant to connect one model to the next as an iPhone and then claim EVERYTHING is the same and then in the next breath say it is obnoxiously longer?
Additionally, the “obscene” price you refer to is the same as the flagship phones from the other OEMs at their own introductions.
And the iPad Mini’s size doesn’t have to be accommodated for because it has the same number of pixels as the iPad 2 for which there are large numbers of apps already written and available that are optimized for the larger surface area of a true tablet.