IPhone 5 Announced Featuring A6 Processor, Larger Display And LTE Support

It’s finally here! The iPhone 5 has been announced, lets take a look at what we’ll be seeing in the next device!

Some quick stats. The iPhone 5 is 18% thinner than the 4S, and 20% lighter! Making it the worlds lightest iPhone. We’re familiar with this design by now, but still, looks great! The two-tone aluminium , with glass featured at either end.

The Display:

We can confirm a 326ppi Retina display, measuring 4 inches (1136×640). This gives you room for 5 rows of icons on your home screen, whilst still holding 4 columns. All of Apple’s first-party apps have been optimized to make use of the bigger screen, including the Calendar App, iPhoto, iMovie and Garage Band.

Apps optimized for the current configuration will run letterboxed, but before long, they’ll fit the 4 inch screen just fine. The screen also features 44% more color saturation. Now, on to connectivity.

Connectivity

The iPhone 5 will work on GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, HSPA, HSPA+, DC-HSDPA and LTE!

HSPA+ is 21Mbps, DC-HSDPA is 42Mbps, and LTE is a max of 100. There is now a single chip for voice and data, and a single radio chip as well. These antenna can automatically switch out, similar to the 4S.

In the US, it will hit Sprint, AT&T and Verizion, and all will support LTE. Canada: Rogers, Telus, Bell, Fido, Virgin. Asia: KDDI SoftBan, KT, SK telecom, SmartTone. European customers will see DT and EE, as well as the dual-carrier networks. There’s also 802.11a/b/g/n, and it’s dual-channel, up to 150Mbps. Now for a new chip!

Processor

The iPhone 5 will feature the A6 processor, which is 22% smaller than its predecessors, and also more energy efficient. It will run Pages 2.1X faster than before, and keynote attachments will load 1.7X faster.

The Keynote featured a fantastic demo of Real Racing 3, described as being “on-par with the current console gameplay graphics”. The new processor is not a slouch by any means.

Battery Life

The iPhone 5 comes with an improved battery, below is a table documenting each activity and the hours of battery life you can expect undertaking each one, enough said.

iSight

The iPhone 5′s camera is the same 8 megapixel camera, the same as the 4S. However, it has been made thinner to fit the new design, it has a dynamic low light mode and a sapphire lens crystal cover. It also features a new image processor and a “smart filter” for color matching.

There’s also a panorama feature, that as you can see, takes some pretty amazing panoramic photos.

The video is still 1080p, but now has better video stabilization, facial recognition, and the ability to take stills whilst shooting. The front facing camera now records 720p.

More awesome stuff.

The iPhone 5 also features 3 microphones for improved audio and noise cancellation. It also has wideband audio, which will make your voice sound more natural, however this does require carrier partnership.

The dock connector is as we expected. 9 pin, with an adaptive interface. It’s now tougher, and reversible. The interface is all digital, and should be a cracking feature of the phone. There is also an adapter for 30-pin compatibility, so no need to panic there!

There’s a nifty demo of iOS operating on the new hardware, which again, looks fantastic. We’re seeing the maps demo, turn-by-turn navigation and flyovers all running uninterrupted, the satellite imagery also looks great.

There are now 100 million points of interest that can be found using a search engine. We’re also seeing demos of PassBook, and the new Photo Stream feature.

The iPhone 5 will be available in wait for it… black or white, the white version will feature a raw aluminum back, and the black version will feature a black anodized backing.

Some of you might dismiss this release as a little underwhelming because we have seen so many leaks leading up to the event. Naturally, Apple can’t be blamed for that, and this is undeniably a phenomenal piece of hardware. But what do you think? Let us know all your thoughts in the comments below!