Apple’s iPhone 5 reviewed

LTE to the rescue

A key selling point for the iPhone 5 will be its ability to connect to Australian LTE, or ‘4G’ networks.

It appears that Apple has learned from the flack it copped with its  last iPad’, which could support a form of LTE, but not in many European and Asia Pacific countries.

The good news is that the new iPhone connects to Telstra, Optus and Virgin Mobile’s networks right out of the box, and Vodafone has confirmed the handset will run on its LTE network once it is finished some time next year.

In terms of operation, the iPhone 5 will display an LTE symbol when it is connected to one of these high-speed networks, but the maximum download and upload speeds will depend on a lot of factors, including how many people are sharing the available data bandwidth as well as the quality of the signal.

While the theoretical maximum download speed can be up to 100 megabits per second, this is nowhere near reality.

From our Woolloomooloo-based office in Sydney, we were able to consistently achieve 20Mbps download speeds and 10Mbps upload speeds. This is faster than our office Wi-Fi connection, and seriously impressive.

For many, the ability to tether the iPhone 5 to a computer or iPad means you can bring LTE speeds to other devices when you need a speed boost.

The iPhone uses a new, smaller SIM format called nano SIM, which is a space saving measure, and there’s also been an improvement to the 5’s Wi-Fi connectivity. It now supports dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, meaning that you can transfer data to speeds up to 150 Mbps when connected to a Wi-Fi router that speaks the same language.

At its core

The iPhone 5 is a faster phone than the 4S thanks to its new A6 processor. While other smartphones are using quad-core processors, the A6 is dual-core. Apple says that the new chip can deliver graphics and processing performance up to twice as fast as the 4S.

While difficult to rigorously test at this early stage, we did find that web pages loaded faster, applications, including the camera (a 40% improvement), took less time to open, and the 5 was more responsive when opening and scrolling a large PDF-based attachment.

This is a subjective comment, but the 5 feels faster than the 4S and does not appear to pale by comparison to what is offered by smartphones featuring quad-core processors.

Also, the more efficiently the processor runs, the less demands it will make on the battery.

Camera take two

A new iSight camera on the iPhone 5 contains a number of improvements and subtleties that build on the already excellent still and video camera system in the iPhone 4S.

Outwardly, a more robust and scratch resistant sapphire crystal, versus a glass cover, protects the camera lens.

The camera is still 8 megapixels, but now includes a panorama mode that can capture up to 28 megapixel scenes spanning 240 degrees. Taking a panoramic shot is easy – the phone guides you along the way, prompting to you move up, down or slow down as you move the phone along a panoramic arc.

There is also face detection support for up to 10 faces, with the idea that the camera applies the best settings for the faces, and there are enhancements to noise reduction and low light performance.

Shooting in low light is the weakness of all smartphone cameras, and the iPhone 5’s smarts can give you up to 2 additional stops of light in these situations.

In practice, we found a noticeable reduction in low-light noise in our flower scene versus the 4S when taken with the flash turned off. The 5’s auto-focus also appeared to work better than the 4S in dark scenes.

A welcome upgrade is the new front-facing FaceTime HD camera, which can now record video in 720p resolution. This means improved clarity for FaceTime video conferencing and, like the rear facing camera, it also supports face recognition.