iPhone 5

The announcements of iPhone 5 and the new iOS were quite exciting. The iPhone 5 has features that are very appealing and a few new features (Lightning) which some famous folks (Al Roker) have been complaining about.

New design – thinner, lighter, larger display
This is what you’ll first see that’s new about the iPhone 5. Things have been “sleekened”. I picture Jonathan Ive bent over a clay mold, carefully shaving fractions off with his blade when I see the thinness of the final product.

Faster chip
What caught my eye as the most appealing features of the iPhone is the faster chip. Inside the new phone is the A6 chip. The A6 chip offers up to twice speed as the current A5 chip and better graphics performance. What is awesome is that this chip is efficient in its use of power. You’ll still get up to 8 hours of talk time.

Other improvements
The Retina display appears to be awesome as well with 326 pixels per inch. I guess that you can’t really tell how awesome if you’re looking at a Retina image on a non-Retina display can you? That is a question for the philosophers among us.

Support for LTE improves cellular speeds but just like the A6 chip, it does so without severely draining the battery, according to Apple.

Improved camera, audio and EarPods will certainly make using the iPhone 5 really nice. I’m looking forward to testing out the EarPods to see how they feel.

The feature that has some people complaining is the new Lightning adapter. If you’ve been an Apple fan for some time, you know that adapters change. This was true for the iPod and it’s true for the iPhone as well. If you’re wondering why Apple chose another proprietary port, they’ve been doing this for years, too. I for one am not bothered by Lightning as long as it does what is intended. I don’t have a huge number of accessories so I probably won’t even need to get an adapter to go from 30-pin to Lightning.

Then the question is, should you upgrade. Definitely if you have an older iPhone 3G, 3GS or 4. If you already have a iPhone 4S, you might want to try one out in person before you commit unless your the type that has to have the latest. I’m eligible for a phone upgrade next month, so I’ll be upgrading phones then.

Small Dog Electronics is an AT&T provider and we anticipate having the iPhone 5 in our retail stores close to or on the September 21st date. Quantities might be sketchy at first. But if you want to get in line, we highly recommend that you order as soon as you can by visiting our retail stores or direct through your cellular provider.