My experience with the iPhone 5, iOS and the EarPods has been great. The iPhone is everything Apple said it would be and with iOS 6 built-in, it’s clear to me that Apple has another winner on its hands.
I can’t think of any good reason why anyone wouldn’t upgrade or purchase the iPhone 5.
"Visually much has stayed the same, but the biggest change is impossible to see."
"We've long-since departed from a time when clock speed or core count could be directly correlated with performance."
"The iPhone 4S already has one of the best displays on the market with regard to pixel density, brightness and contrast, and the iPhone 5 brings that up another notch."
"Whether or not you actually want a higher-quality front-facing camera depends on just how much time you spend putting your face on before getting your FaceTime on."
"Two times faster? Twice the graphics performance? Better battery life? Actually, yes. The iPhone 5 over-delivers on all those promises."
"The iPhone 5 is a significant improvement over the iPhone 4S in nearly every regard, and in those areas that didn't see an upgrade over its predecessor -- camera, storage capacity -- one could make a strong case that the iPhone 4S was already ahead of the curve. Every area, that is, except for the OS. If anything, it's the operating system here that's beginning to feel a bit dated and beginning to show its age.
Still, the iPhone 5 absolutely shines. Pick your benchmark and you'll find Apple's thin new weapon sitting at or near the top. Will it convince you to give up your Android or Windows Phone ways and join the iOS side? Maybe, maybe not. Will it wow you? Hold it in your hand -- you might be surprised. For the iOS faithful this is a no-brainer upgrade. This is without a doubt the best iPhone yet. This is a hallmark of design. This is the one you've been waiting for."
Walt Mossberg: 'Apple has taken an already great product and made it better’ - http://t.co/eaf07HNB
"The world’s most popular smartphone becomes significantly faster, thinner and lighter this week, while gaining a larger, 4-inch screen—all without giving up battery life, comfort in the hand and high-quality construction.
"That’s my quick take on Apple’s new iPhone 5, the sixth generation of the iconic device, which goes on sale on Friday. I’ve been testing the new iPhone for nearly a week and I like it a lot and can recommend it, despite a few negatives, such as a new maps app that has one big plus, but other big minuses. On balance, I still consider the iPhone the best smartphone on the market, especially with its staggering 700,000 third-party apps and a wealth of available content."
"Apple has taken an already great product and made it better, overall. Consumers who prefer huge screens or certain marginal features have plenty of other choices, but the iPhone 5 is an excellent choice."
The good: The iPhone 5 adds everything we wanted in the iPhone 4S: 4G LTE, a longer, larger screen, and a faster A6 processor. Plus, its top-to-bottom redesign is sharp, slim, and feather-light.
The bad: Sprint and Verizon models can't use voice and data simultaneously. The smaller connector renders current accessories unusable without an adapter. There's no NFC, and the screen size pales in comparison to jumbo Android models.
"The iPhone 5 completely rebuilds the iPhone on a framework of new features and design, addressing its major previous shortcomings. It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe."
When Apple introduced the iPhone 4S last October, you could sense the initial disappointment. Many people were longing for an iPhone 5. The iPhone 4S that came instead may not have represented a dramatic upgrade, but it was a snappy handset with an excellent camera and a sometimes-obedient virtual digital assistant named Siri. It went on to become the best-selling iPhone to date.
The iPhone 5 should keep Apple at the front of the smartphone pack. But choosing it versus a top-of-the line Android alternative isn't a cut-and-dry decision.
Nearly a year later the iPhone 5 is upon us. And what I detect this time is lust. The feelings are unlikely to diminish once buyers get their hands on the iPhone 5 Friday, or whenever their pre-ordered phones arrive.
The iPhone 5 is a winner that should keep Apple at the front of the smartphone pack. But choosing iPhone 5 vs. a top-of-the line Android alternative isn't a cut-and-dried decision, especially if you're partial to a jumbo display, such as the one on the big, bold and beautiful Samsung Galaxy S III, an Android rival for which I've had high praise.
First, design. A single company, known for its obsession over details, produces both the hardware and the software. The result is a single, coherently designed whole.
Second, superior components. As the world’s largest tech company, Apple can call the shots with its part suppliers. It can often incorporate new technologies — scratch-resistant Gorilla glass, say, or the supersharp Retina screen — before its rivals can.
Third, compatibility. The iPhone’s ubiquity has led to a universe of accessories that fit it. Walk into a hotel room, and there’s probably an iPhone connector built into the alarm clock.
The iPhone 5 does nothing to change the pros and cons in that discussion. Windows Phones offer brilliant design, but lag badly in apps and accessories.
Android phones shine in choice: you can get a huge screen, for example, a memory-card slot or N.F.C. chips (near-field communication — you can exchange files with other N.F.C. phones, or buy things in certain stores, with a tap). But Android is, on the whole, buggier, more chaotic and more fragmented — you can’t always upgrade your phone’s software when there’s a new version.
IPhones don’t offer as much choice or customization. But they’re more polished and consistently designed, with a heavily regulated but better stocked app catalog. They offer Siri voice control and the best music/movie/TV store, and the phone’s size and weight have boiled away to almost nothing.
If you have an iPhone 4S, getting an iPhone 5 would mean breaking your two-year carrier contract and paying a painful penalty; maybe not worth it for the 5’s collection of nips and tucks. But if you’ve had the discipline to sit out a couple of iPhone generations — wow, are you in for a treat.
It’s just too bad about that connector change. Doesn’t Apple worry about losing customer loyalty and sales?
Actually, Apple has a long history of killing off technologies, inconveniently and expensively, that the public had come to love — even those that Apple had originally developed and promoted. Somehow, life goes on, and Apple gets even bigger.
So if you wanted to conclude your term paper by projecting the new connector’s impact on the iPhone’s popularity, you’d be smart to write, “very little (sigh).” When you really think about it, we’ve all taken this class before."
New York Times gadget guru David Pogue loves the iPhone 5 but has one rather tiny quibble.
He doesn't like that Apple changed the connector cable for the iPhone. He thinks that's annoying.
Other than that, he thinks the phone is fantastic.
Here are the highlights from his review:
"The new phone, in all black or white, is beautiful."
"This iPhone is so light, tall and flat, it’s well on its way to becoming a bookmark."
Of the big screen, "It’s a nice but not life-changing change."
"Few people complained about the old phone’s speed, but this one certainly zips."
"In practical terms, you encounter fewer days when the battery dies by dinnertime"
"The camera is among the best ever put into a phone."
With iPhone 5, Apple Has Chiseled The Smartphone To Near Perfection
If you have an Android phone and have been waiting for a big iPhone update to explore or re-explore the device, now is the time. And you Windows Phone 7 users who are getting screwed in the move to Windows Phone 8, you may want to look as well. And if you’re still a Blackberry user, well, good luck with that. I think you’re beyond my help.
Those worried about the talk of “disappointment” surrounding the iPhone 5, I suggest you simply go to an Apple Store starting on Friday and try it for yourself. My guess is you’ll immediately recognize just how ridiculous all that bluster actually is. This is the smartphone nearly perfected.
"Does the iPhone 5 feel better in the hand than the iPhone 4S? Is it faster, and smoother running; does it have a more capable camera; can it access data more rapidly while on the move? Does the combination of iPhone hardware and iOS software feel the most holistic and balanced of any Apple smartphone to-date? The answer to all those questions is yes. Apple has addressed the bigger-screen debate with a solution that doesn’t undermine key usability promises, delivered LTE without destroying battery life, and wrapped it up in a design that’s both comfortably familiar and crisply revitalized.
The iPhone 5 probably won’t take any more marketshare from Android than the iPhone 4S did before it. Neither of the major platforms is going anywhere, and each has its loyal user-base. But, it’s the best iPhone so far, and breaking 2m sales in the first 24hrs of preorders suggests the public at large is confident of the same thing.
What the iPhone 5 really convinces me, though, is that throwing bells and whistles into a device doesn’t necessarily make it a better phone in the end. I’d drifted from the iPhone 4S because I had core needs it was no longer satisfying: a larger screen, for instance. Where the iPhone 5 edges back into the picture is in how well it integrates into my daily life. So many things I can make work on Android – video calling, for instance, but iPhone simply makes them more straightforward. If they’re straightforward, that means I use them more.
Competition between mobile platforms keeps the industry moving and innovating. That can often present itself as a surfeit of innovation: feature upon feature, piled high in an all-singing, all-dancing device. Right now, the iPhone 5 has the best balance of everyday usability and performance, without the distraction of functionality that is clever but unintuitive. It’s an area in which Apple excels, and it’s the reason the iPhone 5 is one of the best smartphones on the market today."
As usual..expected from Engadget..I'll be more interested in the official review from non bias sources like The Verge or CNET
Engadget has never really been full of Apple fans but okay tbh. Here's your CNET review
CNET - "The iPhone 5 completely rebuilds the iPhone on a framework of new features and design, addressing its major previous shortcomings. It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe."
So, the long and the short of it is...we're going to get more arguments over which phone is better (iPhone or S3?!...wait, what about the Lumia?!).
Awesome.
Happy for those of you who are upgrading, though. It's about time that you guys get to experience what it's like to have an iOS phone that's actually top of the line.
The iPhone 5 Reviews Are The Most Positive We've Ever Seen For A Smartphone
People who had their hands on an iPhone 5 for the last week are publishing their reviews tonight and we have to say these are probably the most overwhelmingly positive reviews we've read for any gadget.
MG Siegler at TechCrunch writes, "The iPhone 5 shines in just about every conceivable way," adding, "I really do believe this is the best iPhone upgrade that Apple has done yet."
CNET's Scott Stein review says this is the "iPhone we've always wanted," and "It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe."
What makes it so great?
Apple added LTE, the faster wireless connection, and Siegler says, "the iPhone 5 is now fast as hell." Walt Mossberg of All Things D says the iPhone 5's connection speed is ten times as fast as last year's iPhone 4S.
David Pogue of the New York Times says, "The camera is among the best ever put into a phone."
While a lot of people who only saw photos of the iPhone 5 thought it was boring, or not much of an upgrade everyone who reviewed it thinks it's a fantastic upgrade.
Pogue writes, "The new phone, in all black or white, is beautiful. Especially the black one, whose gleaming, black-on-black, glass-and-aluminum body carries the design cues of a Stealth bomber."
CNET's Stein says, "you're going to be shocked at how light this phone is." Nearly every reviewer mentioned that it's so light it disappears in your pocket. Despite being light weight, it doesn't feel cheap like Android phones, say all the reviewers.
One of the long-time knocks on the iPhone is that it's great for just about everything but being a phone. That appears to be a thing of the past with the iPhone 5. Using a Verizon iPhone 5, Mossberg reports, "voice calls I made on the iPhone 5 were clear, better than in the past. I had no dropped calls."
There are almost no complaints, and when there are complaints they seem almost forced. Pogue, for instance, is upset Apple has a new charging cord. While that's certainly a pain for people who have owned many Apple gadgets through the years, it's not really a knock on the phone.
Walt Mossberg doesn't like Apple Maps, but not because they're inaccurate, but because, "they tend to default to a more zoomed-in view than Google's, making them look emptier until you zoom out."
Also, no one likes the fact that Apple doesn't have transit maps. That's something Apple says it will address with third-party applications.
One thing that's neither bad nor good is Apple's bigger screen. Some people like it, some people don't notice it. No one has anything bad to say about it.
After reading all of these reviews, it's hard not to be excited about the iPhone 5. Apple has knocked the cover off the ball with this phone. Or as Siegler put it, "This is the smartphone nearly perfected."
I love them but I was honestly expecting more WOW content from
The Verge. It's kinda basic and not as unique. and some of the mistakes they've been making on the site lately. - http://candlerblog.com/2012/09/07/done-with-the-verge/
CNET has sucked since their all star team left. The site looks cute tho.
"The minute you pick the iPhone 5 up you notice it's much lighter—20% lighter, in fact. It's so much lighter that you wonder if it's a demonstration mock-up, not the real thing."
"What I really noticed is how light it is. I still feel weirded out by it. The iPhone 5's 3.95-ounce weight is the lightest an iPhone's ever been."
"I almost want to compare it to one of those fake electronics place holders they put on floor display units at furniture stores — but that’s obviously not right."
"...it's the lightness, not the bigger display or the thinness, that nearly everybody praises when first getting a chance to hold the iPhone 5 in their own hands."
"It’s also lighter, just under four ounces; it disappears completely in your pocket."
"Of course with thinner comes lighter, and the iPhone 5 is that too. I guarantee you’ll be surprised the first time you pick it up."
"The result is a phone that’s compact and feather-weight, yet, thanks to the materials used in its aluminum-and-glass body, conveys a sense of solidity and feels great in the hand."
Get those sales Apple! Can't wait until my white one arrives! 
at BGR not having a review and they're like the biggest Apple fanboys on the planet! 
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