Grum – personal preference, it just bugs me.

The two things that hadn’t been leaked that would have made the 5 a “buy now” option for me were a sexy looking edge to edge screen in an original iPhone sized casing and an NFC chip for a bit of future proofing. Neither materialised.

Long battery life will be welcome if it is true though.

As it is it looks nice but I’m not convinced I want it enough to upgrade from my 4 and I’m also not sure if I want it as my phone for the next 2 years.

Wait and see until I hold one I think.

Grum – personal preference, it just bugs me.

Oh go on, gives us a bit more detail.

S3 for me I think. free upgrade, and less than 30 quid a month for free data, and £150 for selling my iPhone…no brainer

I think I’ll swap my 4 for a 4S purely for the better camera, then sit happy waiting for the next ‘jump’ in phones. evolution not revolution means waiting for several models before the big spend is worth while. Of course, this leaves more money for bike bits!

Don’t like my iPad2 either. Android just so much better/intuitive. When have the spare money I’ll be getting rid and buying an android tablet

Can you fit the S2 in the inside pocket of a suit jacket, without it looking like your packing heat?

Presumably yes. Weapons have come a long way but I think they still have to be wider than the projectiles. No real world experience though, as I don’t ever wear a suit 🙂

Don’t like my iPad2 either. Android just so much better/intuitive.

Each to their own and all that – I don’t think I’m a ‘fanboy’ (see my above post about the 5) – but I find it odd that people would dislike the iPad.

Just caught up on the details. Seems like evolution rather than revolution. Still, I suppose, if it ain’t broke…

Surprised no-one’s mentioned the new CPU. That seems like the biggest deal to me.

Don’t like my iPad2 either. Android just so much better/intuitive.

Blasphemy! 😆

(my 2 year old can work my iPad. Perhaps more impressively my father-in-law can too. Not sure how much more intuitive you could possibly want?)

So to summarise:

thinner, lighter, with a bigger/better screen, bigger battery, much faster CPU, 4G/LTE support, better camera, better video, better speakers and better microphones. 

Okay so it can’t fly or turn you into Bradley Wiggins, but it all sounds like a pretty good upgrade to me. And that’s just the hardware.

Same thing happened with the 4s. I think people expect so much of Apple these days that unless a new iPhone is mind-blowingly revolutionary then it is a disappointment. Ah well.

For me, it was all about iOS 6 UI being overhauled. I guess my dissapointment with the early betas was justified. Ah well. At least I have tab syncing…

Cougar – Member

Surprised no-one’s mentioned the new CPU. That seems like the biggest deal to me.

Its a good chipset, now running a 28 nanometre process as opposed to the 4S’s 40 nanometre processor…..should help with battery life, less heat etc….it jumps ahead of the quad-core offerings who are on 32nm chipsets currently, my HTC One-S is also on a 28nm chipset and i get great battery life with that so things look good for the iphone-5 on that front.

The only fly in the ointment for battery life will be 4G data, speak to a smartphone user in the US and ask how fast 4G drains their phone’s battery….its horrific.

GrahamS – Member
I don’t really understand why folk like having apps running all the time on-screen, sucking the battery dry for no real reason.

Personal preference, some like the uniform layout of iOS where you have to go into menus or open apps to do anything and others like the live Widgets feature of Android where you can have information changing in real time on the home screen without having to go into the full app.

On my home screen i have a Twitter feed, a BBC news headlines feed and Facebook reduced to about quarter screen size, obviously they use battery but nowhere near as much as people think….as i type this my HTC One-S is on 58% battery having been on for 16hrs so far, i regularly get 2 days use from a charge.

The problem was never the Android OS but rather the hardware at the time, small batteries and inefficient chipsets running the phones gave terrible battery life so people naturally blamed the OS….finally batteries and processors are powerful enough to run smartphones with few (if any) problems any more.

I think it’s a good update, could be tempted now the iphone has Sat-Nav built in, that was the one glaring hole for me before.
As others have said, it is very hard for any manufacturer to make anything revolutionary….a modern smartphone does it all….personal organiser, sat-nav, email, text, calls, web browser, games, kindle/electronic books, NFC payments etc etc….what else do we want from a smartphone?

Pretty much what grum and Jamie said, first got a 3 and yeah it laid out what a phone should be, then got a 4 and sort of an improvement, but the 5…..well, meh looks ok, not in any rush to upgrade

could be tempted now the iphone has Sat-Nav built in, that was the one glaring hole for me before.

I’ve got FOUR sat navs on my iPhone 4 (2 car and 2 bike), all of which were free.
Don’t really understand why built-in is a big deal?

NFC payments

NFC does seem to be notably absent from the 5. Odd given the new wallet app. 😕

What you need to ask yourself is, is this really the best they have to offer? They don’t have anything sat waiting ready for the five S or whatever it will be, I’m pretty sure they do have something up their sleeve, and that makes it annoying. It’s no longer about being cutting edge, and more about landing a new iPhone around the same time as everyone who bought the last one is due an upgrade.

*glitchy bump*

more about landing a new iPhone around the same time as everyone who bought the last one is due an upgrade.

Meantime other people criticise Apple for having such a slow refresh cycle compared to Samsung or HTC.

They can’t win.

Integrated sat-nav (if Apple has done it properly) is so much better than 3rd party apps….google a place/restaurant/shop etc and tap ‘directions’ which invariably come up just below whatever you searched for in the search results on google, hey presto the maps function of the OS opens up automatically showing the location of whatever you just googled, then tap on navigation and get instant sat-nav to whatever it is you just googled….you didnt need to open maps or sat-nav seperately, no typing addresses into a 3rd party app, seamless integrated maps and sat-nav in the OS is superb and something i use most days at work, i wouldnt have considered an iphone all the time this was missing.

If the Apple version is fully integrated like Google Chrome to Google Maps to Google Navigation then it will be great, otherwise they may as well have just left it like before where the user finds 3rd party nat-nav apps instead.

Just to confirm an s3 fits fine in the pocket. Widgets are awesome.

Surprised at no nfc or wireless charging though. But they don’t actually have to try that hard do they.

Surprised at no nfc or wireless charging though. But they don’t actually have to try that hard do they.

Nope. Apple could smear dog shit on a calculator, and I would buy two in a heartbeat.

Navigon has google search, its also better than the premium tomtom’s my collegues were using.

Well the kudos of owning the latest iPone has finally come to an end.
I’m rather happy about that.
Now I can enter bars and cafes without feeling like some sort of inferior lepper and sit on tubes in smugness for choosing a far superior phone in the for of an S3″

I say well done Apple but like this years GCSE grades. “could try harder” / “down graded”

Still looks nice, almost as nice as an S3, but not quite.

Reading through this thread has made my mind up, the phone might be great but i never want to become or be associated with the kind of person owners of one seem to have become. I thought “fan bois” was just a joke but blimey people have a look at yourselves.

They’re fantastic devices. I’m due a new phone, so may just get one depending on upgrade price. They’re easy to use, far better for what I use it for compared to my works blackberry. (which is in turn far better than the iPhone for what I use that for)

Reading through this thread has made my mind up, the phone might be great but i never want to become or be associated with the kind of person owners of one seem to have become. I thought “fan bois” was just a joke but blimey people have a look at yourselves.

Would that look be from a photo taken using a ‘MySpace angle’ while riding ones bike?

Anyway, all I have seen in this thread is people talking about a product they like, with no more evangelical verve that what you might see in a poncey real ale or bike thread. Why, when it comes to technology, does this like and endorsement for a brand become ‘fanboyism’? Which, if it does exist is kept company by its equally popular bedfellow, the ‘reverse fanboy’…..damn hipsters.

Reading through this thread has made my mind up, the phone might be great but i never want to become or be associated with the kind of person owners of one seem to have become. I thought “fan bois” was just a joke but blimey people have a look at yourselves.

I would say you display much more ‘fanboy’ tendencies when talking about 29ers than the people in this thread have about iPhones. 😉

the phone might be great but i never want to become or be associated with the kind of person owners of one seem to have become.

Christ on a bike, I bet you’re a laugh on a night out.
‘Hello ladies, before we get acquainted, what make of phone’s in your handbag’.

Well the kudos of owning the latest iPone has finally come to an end.
I’m rather happy about that.

So am I, and I’ve had iPhones for 4 years now.
You know what, sometimes I’m embarrassed to own one. I don’t have one to show off, I have one because I like it, it suits me and I use it ALL the time. Mine’s covered in a chunky case partly to protect it, partly to disguise it.
I don’t generally “do” expensive brand names generally but I do have the odd weakness. Oakley, Apple, Ducati. I’m very careful how I spend my money though, I don’t waste it on stuff because it’s new or fashionable.

But the negativeness of people like RD pisses me off. He’s just flapping his gob because he’s got nothing better to say, to look clever.

The pricings up on the website. From $199 in the US, from £529 here. Wtf…

Integrated sat-nav (if Apple has done it properly) is so much better than 3rd party apps….google a place/restaurant/shop etc and tap ‘directions’

Yep, both the free car sat-navs I use (NavFree and Waze) can search for destinations in Google. In fact Waze searches its own database, Google, FourSquare, Bing and your contacts.

Just to confirm an s3 fits fine in the pocket.

Doesn’t in mine. In fact if I’ve got a cover on then I can only just get an iPhone in. Suit jackets with huge pockets full of heavy gadgets hang very badly, giving you the Boris Johnson look.

Surprised at no nfc or wireless charging though. But they don’t actually have to try that hard do they.

Lack of NFC does seem a bit odd – but perhaps given the obvious privacy concerns plus the security holes in the Android NFC, its not so bad.

Explain wireless charging to me: you spend an extra £50(?) buying a “magical mat” which charges inefficiently, but saves you the sub-2 seconds it takes to plug in a phone.

Hmm.. and they say iPhone users have more money than sense 😀

The new dock connector is reversible so it saves the only (very minor) frustration with plugging in a phone:

Well the kudos of owning the latest iPone has finally come to an end.

Can’t say I’ve ever felt such “kudos” – it’s a phone, not something to be proud of – but I’m 37, not a 12 year old comparing trainers at lunchtime. 😀

The S3 is a very nice bit of kit. And has plenty of plus points over the iPhone.
If I hadn’t already drunk the Appley-flavour Kool-Aid then I might consider it myself but for now the apps and “ecosystem” and my investment in both still keep me on the Fruit Side.

Sent from my iPhone 😉

The pricings up on the website. From $199 in the US, from £529 here. Wtf…

That’s $199, minimum cost depending on price plan, on a 2 year contract vs £529 sim free.

Graham S. Having google search in the nav app isn’t as slick as the way it’s done on android.
My wife has one and the Google Navigation is probably the only thing I’m jealous of (although she prefers the keyboard too).
Basically, see a postcode anywhere and just click it and you’re navigating.
I have to say, I have navfree and when we’re in the car together, I always use her google nav, as I like the 3 route choices and a few other bits. The computer-generated voice sucks, but then it does read street names, etc.

Basically I’m out of contract on my iPhone 4.
Went from paying £35/m to £11/m

To go to an iPhone 5, would mean going back to £35/m for 18months.
It doesn’t seem worth it.

But then neither do any of the Android phones.

But then neither do any of the Android phones.

So stick with the iP4?

Lighter, faster, smaller and same boring OS. Oh and bloody expensive. You may not be a fanboi PP (you’re a nice bloke), but some of the fanbois who parade around my office with their apple products espousing how great they are like its a religion need to get a grip. There’s sadly plenty of them out there.

For the fanbois

So stick with the iP4?

yup – and probably iOS5 as I don’t want it to slow down any. I’ll wait for people to say if iOS6 is a problem.

Ultimately, It will be an app that dictates an upgrade. Maybe a camera-related one. If a new app comes out that my lowly iPhone 4 can’t run properly, then I might be tempted. But it will annoy me, and will probably be down to lazy programming.

What you need to ask yourself is, is this really the best they have to offer?

Its probably the best that they need to offer to satisfy the market. Longer screen, slightly faster and LTE which should cover most needs for the nest couple of years.

Phones are almost at the stage where PC’s are these days. Unless you’re into gaming or serious graphics work, ANY new computer you buy nowadays ( even tesco £299 laptops ) will do the job in terms of day to day tasks smoothly.

New phones are reaching that stage too. They manage the web, facebook, photos and calls without really breaking sweat. If they came out with a phone that was 10x faster, would it really be any more useful to me? not really.

Looks alright, but lacks a certain something… Dunno, perhaps they could have restyled it a bit?

The lack of NFC doesn’t bother me, although it is a bit weird – but all things considered the technology’s still a bit green, I’m waiting for them to iron out the bugs before it becomes a must-have feature. (When I say “a bit green” I mean the full implementation and deployment, obviously NFC itself has been around for years…)

Good enough to consider for the next phone, if and when I get one, but not so exciting as to make me want to queue up for it.

I’m due an upgrade, just gone out of contract and yes I’ve managed to crack the screen on my Iphone 4 again.

Question

– Any reason not to switch to Orange/EvEv and get nice fast 4g?
– Where should I sell my iphone 4?