Here it is guys! We've all been waiting for this moment or at least some of us have..finally the iPhone 5 is released!

What do you guys think? I know I'll be getting my hands on one next week!

I guess some of you are happy that HK is getting a release date LOL I'm not too happy since I can't ship my phones back!

anyone buying the new phone in HK :  you MUST check if the 5's LTE band is serviced by any of the carriers in HK !!!

I would like to say I love my Samsung Galaxy S III.
For ease of use it shits all over the iPhone and I am not restricted to Apple software for music etc...

The lighter, thinner, faster iPhone 5 does not cut it for me. Afterall, we all get iOS 6 anyway. Well, I already have it since i'm jailbroken.

not impressed.
they added 4G, slightly bigger screen.
that's about it.

I guess those who aren't impressed are the hard groupies.  I'm pretty impressed. It isharder to make a phone better, faster and lighter than the older model with bigger screens.   I like the LTE feature and since I'm in USA/CANADA I can exploit it.  Means faster everything like loading and reading this forum.  Only iPhone 4, it takes forever to type and even right now I am struggling.  Better and faster phone will help me more here.  Samsung is good but unfortunately I've been Apple bitten

Would love to move Cupertino's newest phone (currently use a 4S) BUT here are my issues:
1. Longer - bit of a negative as it wont fit in a pocket so well.
2. New Adaptor - massive fail, I've got too much shit that fits the current adaptor.
3. Headphone socket on bottom - fail, less usable

for those who don't like the new 5 ... maybe you should just get another 4S in case they stop production in the future  

LOL, I've already got so many Apple devices it's scary. Oddly enough, I was never much of an Apple guy until I started using their products a year ago and I've become addicted, I love the way it all just works and the various devices work well together.
I would love to upgrade to this latest iteration but I think they missed the mark with it.
If I want another 4S I figure I'll be able to but a dozen on eBay when the 5 hits the market.

Many may not be impressed by the iphone5 but many will buy it anyway.

I am exactly that guy, no big surprise for the new design, no wonder there's any new function, but will still go for it.
Any bro know when we could order ip5 online?

That new connector plug is just apple's way of taking hard earned money from people. I don't see how "innovative" the iphone 5 if its only 4G LTE, a bigger screen, and a slightly better processor. By the way, the 4G tech should've been on the 4S. 4G tech will soon be replaced very soon..

Yep, well Apple have proved themselves adept at taking people's money - few people realise that Apple's iPhone business is bigger and more profitable than Microsoft.

1.) The previous connector plug had been around since 2003. That's 9 years. The new connector is smaller, thinner and thus takes up less space in the iPhone. This in turn allows more space inside the case for other components and also allows the iPhone itself to be smaller.

2.) 4G LTE isn't even available in most parts of the world. Many countries don't even have full fledged 3G yet. LTE also has so many bands that it would take multiple radio chipsets to support them all because there's currently no all-in-one solution. Qualcomm doesn't even have a 3G all-in-one solution chipset.

3.) Apple hasn't and won't advertise it, but the iPhone 5's A6 processor is quite innovative, for Apple that is. First of all, the processor isn't the ARM A15 that was expected. The Apple A6 is actually Apple's first original system on a chip design. Apple in the past, and all smartphone manufacturers, had licensed ARM's technology. Apple made modifications to the A9 for their iPhone 4S and iPad 2/3. Apple has gotten to the point where they're designing a system on a chip on their own. Secondly, Geekbench benchmarks have just come out and the iPhone 5's A6 processor @ 1GHz with 2 cores benchmarks higher than the Samsung Galaxy S III's Exynos 4412 processor @ 1.4GHz  with 4 cores.  The A6 processor is a fucking beast of power!

4.) Screen size is just form, not function. It doesn't add much to usability.

The thing about Apple is that it is a wonderful ecosystem for tech gadgets, I love the way they all hang together. They are also additictive - you get one and it tempting toadd to the family to make up the matched set.
The other things is that Apple's OSs (OSX especially) do some basic things poorly BUT e innovation they have bought to the market (iPad, iPhone specifically) is just amazing.

which is what makes it a beautiful example of Apple's profiteering:- the Micro USB connector is a standard off-the-shelf connector that you can readily buy supplies for at affordable prices, and most of us already have stocks of in the office, at home, in the car and wherever else we need to plug in to recharge or synchronise data

oh,

excuse me Apple crowd,

Apple's special connector does something nobody else's connector does, doesn't it??  Of course it does: by design!  


PS I didn't know about the A6 benchmarks, that's certainly interesting and I'll watch out for that in the press.  

But, I have to admit I am scratching my head a bit - - if it's double the speed of the Galaxy S3, why didn't the launch lead with specific metrics about its speed and the improved user experience it creates, instead of talking about the slightly bigger screen, slightly thinner body, and the other small changes?  I mean, Samsung haven't held back from promoting performance in their communications, so it's clearly something the market is responding to.  
Or am I missing something?

Apple did talk about the performance at the presentation. The iPhone 5 has twice the processor and graphics power as the 4S.  2x is a huge gain for any system!  And Apple the past few years has really cut back on releasing any performance numbers.  The reason being that Apple's products are designed for user function and usability. That's why their presentations and commercials tend to focus on the things you can do with their products rather than raw benchmarks. A random person who doesn't know anything about ARM Cortex processors isn't going to understand how amazing it really is that the iPhone 5's A6 processor is a work by Apple on their own which doesn't use the unreleased ARM A15. And the iPhone 5's 2x performance over the 4S is from Apple using the same GPU as the 4S but clocked slightly higher. The guts themselves are the same except for the processor and 1GB RAM (vs 512MB in the 4S), and Apple has managed to get 2x the processor and graphics power. That's a pretty big deal there.

No it's not a huge gain!!  [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law]It's Moore's Law[/url]

... which means it is what we expect from newly released hardware when compared to a design that's 18 months old ... and we have been seeing that sort of gain consistently for half a century ...

Apple are not at all shy to educate consumers about the resolution of the human retina, nor about the performance gain from iPad to iPad2, or about fast boot times ... all of which I appreciate and respect, and all of which are geeky technical details ... but they don't promote the benchmarks for the iPhone5?  It's a bit surprising.