With iPhone 5, Apple Has Chiseled The Smartphone To Near Perfection
You pick it up and it almost feels fake. That’s not to say it feels cheap; because it doesn’t — quite the opposite, actually. It just doesn’t seem real. Certainly not to someone who has been holding the iPhone 4/4S for the past two years. It feels like someone took one of those devices and hollowed it out.
The iPhone 5 is here.
I’ve had the opportunity to play around with the latest iPhone for the past several days. I won’t beat around the bush: it’s fantastic.
Of course, you’re probably expecting me to say that. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. The fact of the matter is, you can either listen to me or lose out. You’re going to want this phone.
Reading the press coverage since the unveiling, you may have heard that the iPhone 5 is disappointing, or boring. Those people, quite frankly, are fools. They either haven’t actually used the device, or only played with it for a few minutes in the hands-on area after last week’s event. (Or worse, they’re projecting their own boredom in their jobs due to Apple’s dominance of the tech scene these past few years.) Using a device on a regular basis is what really matters. And in that regard, the iPhone 5 shines in just about every conceivable way.
In fact, I’ll go a step farther: I really do believe this is the best iPhone upgrade that Apple has done yet (besting the iPhone-to-iPhone 3G jump and the iPhone 3GS-to-iPhone 4 jump). As such, it’s the best version of the iPhone yet. By far.
Let’s start with the body. I already talked about just how incredibly light it is. 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. Perhaps it’s better to compare it to some of the Android phones out there. Several of those are also very light. The key difference here is that those often attain the low weight by going with a plastic shell. That makes them feel cheap.
The iPhone 5 sheds the weight of the iPhone 4/4S in two major ways. First, by dropping the glass back in favor of aluminum. And second, by integrating the touch technology right into the display itself (previously, it has been a layer over the display), which has allowed Apple to use a thinner sheet of glass on the front of the phone.
The iPhone 4/4S never felt heavy in my hand during day-to-day use over the course of the past two years. But when I would pick up an Android device like the Nexus S, there was no question that the iPhone was heavier. Now the iPhone 5 is actually lighter than the Nexus S, and again, it did with without reverting to plastic. The result is a device that feels every bit as solid and realized as the iPhone 4/4S.
The nice side effect of the reduction of the front glass and the removal of the back glass is that the iPhone 5 is now also significantly thinner than the iPhone 4/4S. This is less noticeable to me in regular usage, but holding them side-by-side, the difference it very obvious.
If, like me, you carry your iPhone in the front pocket of your pants, both the trimness and the weight of the iPhone 5 are most welcome additions (subtractions?).
The other crazy thing about the weight of the iPhone 5 is that it’s so much lighter even with the addition of a significantly larger screen. This is a clear testament to Apple’s hardware and manufacturing prowess. It’s tempting to wonder just how light Apple could have made an iPhone 5 with the old 3.5-inch screen…
Speaking of the screen, I was one of the skeptics about a larger screen making sense on the iPhone. My rationale was two-fold. First, I didn’t want to see the type of fragmentation that Android users and developers face because of the various device sizes in that ecosystem. Second, I just loved the 3.5-inch screen size. It seemed perfect with regard to ergonomics.
In both cases, Apple did something smart.
In terms of fragmentation, Apple avoids any major issues by allowing developers to target the 4-inch screen if they choose to, but only as a part of the same app binary from which they target the 3.5-inch screens. In other words, there will be no apps that only run on the iPhone 5′s screen — at least not any time soon (I do imagine 4-inch screens will eventually be the norm). I’m told that Apple has no plans to enforce that developers must target the 4-inch screen either. It’s fully up to them.
And if they don’t target the new screen, it’s really not a big deal. The iPhone 5 simply takes the standard-sized apps and runs them in “letterbox” mode with small black bars along the top and bottom (or sides, if the device is horizontal) of the screen. Think of it like an iPhone app running on the iPad — only the effect is much less pronounced since the iPhone 5 screen is far smaller than an iPad screen (4-inches versus. 9.7-inches). In fact, on the black iPhone 5, it can be hard to notice the black bars at all thanks to the black front of the device. The bars just blend in.
One nice side effect of the letterboxing is that the iOS system elements can still use the larger screen. So, for example, when Push Notifications come in, they flip down from the top of the screen and settle perfectly above the 3.5-inch app (as opposed to on top of it).
Still, I’m sure that many developers will target the 4-inch screen because I suspect the iPhone 5 will quickly become the best-selling iPhone yet (not to mention the new 4-inch iPod touch coming next month). Apple worked with a couple companies leading up to the iPhone 5 unveiling (OpenTable and CNN), and I’m told it was fairly easy for them to get 4-inch apps ready to go.
In fact, at the time of this writing, there are already several iPhone 5-tailored apps that have gone live in the App Store (which is pretty crazy since most of those developers haven’t actually seen the iPhone 5 in person yet). Reeder, Path, Tweetbot, Well, Lift, Highlight, GroupMe, and Tiny Post are all good to go. As are all of Apple’s major apps, as you might imagine. (Sadly, Twitter itself, which just pushed a major 5.0 upgrade today, apparently didn’t get the 4-inch memo — even though they’re baked right into iOS. Of course, neither did the newly native-app-focused Facebook.)
Most of the apps listed above are simply making use of the longer screen for vertical list-style display purposes. But I’m personally most interested in the apps that use the extra space to get creative with regard to UI/UX. CNN is one of those, as they brought some elements of their iPad app over to the iPhone 5 app (though that updated version is not live just yet).
The other smart thing Apple did with regard to the 4-inch screen was only make it taller. That is, the screen on the iPhone 5 is the exact same width as every iPhone that came before it. It’s simply longer. This minimizes the ergonomic impact of the change (as well as the impact on developers).
To be quite honest, it’s something I’m still getting used to. I don’t find my thumb straining to reach any of the upper touch elements, but I do find myself holding the device slightly differently (cue the “you’re holding it wrong” jokes) than I held previous iPhones. I’m fairly certain this is just something I’ll get used to over time. No big deal. (Though slightly annoying is the tendancy to tap the top of the screen with the 3.5-inch apps which no longer scrolls you to the top of the app, because you have to actually tap the time area.)
I very much appreciate the actual vertical screen real estate within apps such as Mail and Calendar, which now can display much more info. It’s also great for any text-heavy app. And of course, the web.
(Below: Path optimized for the iPhone 5 versus on the iPhone 4S.)
