On October 4th 2011 everyone was expecting the release of the iPhone 5 at the “Let’s Talk iPhone” conference, when Apple announced the iPhone 4S. Well, the iPhone 5 was scheduled for 2012 and here are the main features of the newest Apple smartphone along with the main iOS 6 features:

iPhone 5 Features:

• Completely made of glass and aluminum.
• 18% thinner and 20% lighter than the iPhone 4S (7.6 mm thickness).
• Screen Display: 4 inch (44% increased Color Saturation comparing to iPhone 4S).
• Main menu screen now shows five rows icons.
• Connectivity: HSPA+, DC-HSPDA, 4G LTE and Ultrafast Wireless
• Apple A6 processor.
• Battery: Claiming 8 hours 3G talk, 225 hours standby, 10 hours wi-fi browsing, 8 hours LTE browsing.
• Camera: 8MP, f/2.4 Aperture.
• Three microphones: Front, Bottom and Back.
• New Connector: Lightning (80% smaller)

The iPhone 5 will be available in Black and White starting September 21st.

iOS 6 Features:

• Shared Photo Stream: You can share photos with friends.
• Panorama Picture.
• Facebook Integration.
• Facetime is now 30% less blurry.
• New Maps app (No Google Maps anymore).
• Improved Notification Center (You can now tweet from the NC directly).
• Safari app now available in full-screen.
• VIP Mail feature which lets you prioritize your favorite people.
• New Passbook feature: Keep all your tickets, boarding passes and membership cards in one place.
• Updated Siri: You can now ask her about sports, launch apps by voice, ask her about good movies and post directly to Facebook.
• New iTunes interface.

iOS 6 will be available starting September 19^th.

During the conference a new version of iTunes was introduced along with new iPods.

Opinion:

We are not anymore in the first decade of the 21st century, when the world of technology was completely revolutionized: So many new technological products entered our daily life and we witnessed a huge improvement in the industry. A lot of people had difficulty in realizing that we are not going to see revolutionary new products every year and that lead to a huge disappointment when the iPhone 4S was released. This year, the idea seems clearer to a considerable part of the audience and we can see a lower level of disappointment after the announcement of the iPhone 5. This also lead to a decrease in the hype around Apple conferences which is completely normal in my opinion. We are not anymore shifting to the digital age, we are living the digital age.

Now that I explained my point about the hype and disappointment issue with Apple conferences, let’s talk about the features:

In terms of design and ergonomy the iPhone 5 is a really nice phone made by an interesting mix of glass and aluminum. The bigger screen with an improved resolution is definitely a really good improvement comparing to the iPhone 4S. And, we expect this time not to face battery problems similar to the iPhone 4S ones because the smaller parts of the iPhone 5 should leave more space for a bigger battery. Let’s hope it is going to be the case!

I heard a lot of complaints about the change in the connector which is now much smaller: I believe this change had to happen at some point. Few years ago, phone manufacturers used to release new connectors every year approximately. And, by the way, you shouldn’t worry, an adaptor will be available for the new connector which, I believe, is really beautiful.

Talking about iOS 6, the new features are not bad at all but, there are three ideas I would like to talk about: First, the partnership between Apple and Google came to an end and this means that the Maps app is no longer powered by Google Maps and this is something I am afraid of. I believe Apple will need more time to be able to compete with the famous Google Maps who has been established in the market for a long time now. Second, the partnership between Apple and YouTube (which is owned by Google) has also ended so there won’t be anymore a native YouTube app with the iDevices. However, YouTube already released an independent app and this should solve this issue. Third, I believe an NFC feature would’ve been very useful for the Passbook app (An NFC chip would allow you to scan tickets and pay directly from your smartphone).

All in all I am quite satisfied with the outcome of this conference! I would be pleased to read your opinion too dear readers, so please feel free to leave a comment.