iPhone officially unveiled, 4-inch display, faster A6 chip, and LTE support

Apple has finally taken the wraps off its latest iPhone, the iPhone 5 which according to the company is unlike anything that they, or even anyone in the industry, have made before.

The iPhone 5 is said to be the thinnest smartphone in the world at only 7.6mm thick, that’s 18% thinner than the iPhone 4S. It’s also 20% lighter than before at just 112 grams.

It boasts of a 4-inch Retina display with a 1136 x 640 resolution (326 ppi). It will have the same width as previous iPhones but taller to achieve that almost 16:9 ratio. The display is said to give 44% better color saturation with full sRGB rendering for sharper and less glare when under sunlight. The taller screen allows an extra row of icons and apps not updated for the additional real estate will be displayed in a letterbox format.

The new iPhone is powered by the new A6 chip which is 22% smaller than the previous A5 with twice as fast CPU and GPU.

As for connectivity, it supports GPRS, EDGE, EV-DO, HSPA, HSPA+ DC-HSPA, and LTE, WIFI 802.11 a/b/g/n supporting 2.4GHz and 5GHz. For us Filipinos, there’s a big possibility that it will run on Smart and Globe’s 1800 MHz LTE frequency.

Camera is the same as the iPhone 4S but thinner. You’ll get an 8-megapixel sensor, backside illumination, a 5-element lens and f/2.4 aperture. What’s new are the built-in features such as dynamic low light mode, smart filter to reduce noise, panorama function, and it’s now 40% faster.

The iPhone 5’s camera can do Full HD 1080p video recording with video stabilization and face detection. You can now also take photos while recording. The 1.2 megapixel front camera supports FaceTime HD and can do 720p video recording.

Apple also improved the mic and speakers. It now has 3 mics (front, bottom, back) used for voice recognition and noise cancellation. A 5-magnet transducer should give better sound output thru the speaker with “Wideband audio” support.

Battery life exceeds that of the iPhone 4S. It can do up to 8 hours of LTE use, or 10 hours of WiFi, or 225 hours in standby. It uses the new “Lightning” connector by the way to charge and connect to a PC. The “Lightning” connector is all-digital, 80% smaller and reversible. Unfortunately, it will render your old speaker docks or accessories useless unless you get an adapter for it.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t seem to believe in NFC as that feature was left out. No Bluetooth 4.0 either.

It will come in two colors:

• Black front with black anodized backing
• White front with raw aluminum backing

And is priced as follows (on contract):

• $199 – 16 GB
• $299 – 32 GB
• $399 – 64 GB

Pre-orders will be available this Friday, Sept. 14 and will be shipping on Sept. 21 in the US, CA, UK, GE, FR, AU, JP, HK, and SG.  22 counties will get it on the 28th but Philippines is not included in that batch. Hopefully we’ll have it this October.

Editor’s note: This post is contributed by Niño Guba with some slight revisions by the editor. Niñois a web/mobile app developer who’s very into consumer technology. He was the PC in the PC vs. Mac wars and also for the green robot eating the apple. Evidently, he’s slowly becoming more accepting of the Apple psyche. If you want to check out the list of gadgets he own, check out his Gdgt page. He’s also a fan of RX93.1’s TMR show and even dedicated a site just for their Top 10s.

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