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Apple Announces iPhone 5 1052

Posted by Soulskill from the who-would-have-guessed dept.
Today Phil Schiller took to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, where he announced the long-expected iPhone 5. The casing is made entirely of glass and aluminum, and it's 7.6mm thick, which is 18% thinner than the iPhone 4S. It weighs in at 112 grams, which is 20% lighter than the 4S. Schiller confirmed that the iPhone 5 has a 4" display, with a resolution of 1136x640. It's a 16:9 aspect ratio. The screen is the same width as a 4S, but it's taller. To accommodate older apps, they either center the app or add black bars to make it look right. The new device also has LTE support. Tim Cook spoke earlier about the iPad, making some interesting claims: "Yes, we are in a post-PC world." He also claimed 68% tablet market share for the iPad, and says iPads account for 91% of tablet-based web traffic. The event is continuing, and we'll update this post as further announcements appear. A real-time liveblog is being quickly updated at Ars Technica. Update: 09/12 18:16 GMT by S : Further details below.
Further details: for the iPhone 5, Apple also added support for HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA. The dynamic antenna is an improvement over the 4S, and can switch connections. In the U.S. LTE partners are AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. On to processing: the iPhone 5 runs an A6 chip that's twice as fast as the A5, in addition to being 22% smaller. Rob Murray from EA got up on stage to show a racing game, claiming that the graphics "have been built to full console quality." Battery life for the phone will be roughly 8 hours for either 3G talk-time or browsing. Engadget has a feature-by-feature comparison to the 4S.

The new phone's camera has an 8-Megapixel sensor, with a resolution of 3264x2448. It includes a hybrid IR filter, an f/2.4 aperture, and a five element lens. And a sapphire crystal lens cover, for whatever that's worth. There's a new feature for taking panorama shots (claimed 'breakthrough software,' though similar software already appears on actual cameras), and new software for automatically sharing pictures.

Apple also detailed the new connector, dubbed 'Lightning.' It's entirely digital, and 80% smaller than the old connector. It can be plugged in in either direction. Apple has created a bunch of adapters to let old cables and hardware work with Lightning. They then spoke at length about iOS 6, which will run on the iPhone 5, and demonstrated their new Maps app, which includes turn-by-turn directions (also in 3D using a 'cinematic camera'). "Apple is betting heavily on Passbook and other features to give it a leg up in the competition over Google Android and the upcoming Windows Phone 8." Pre-orders for the iPhone 5 start on Friday, and the device will start shipping on September 21. iOS 6 will roll out on September 19.

Apple's Eddie Cue went on stage to discuss changes to iTunes and the iPod. iTunes has been redesigned to work better on the iPad, and, more importantly, iCloud integration has been built in. They've also made a 'mini-player,' which takes up much less screen real estate. The new iTunes will be available in late October. Changes are coming for iPods as well. The new iPod nano looks like a mini iPod Touch. It's 38% thinner than the previous model, but has a bigger, 2.5" multitouch display. It contains an FM tuner with DVR functionality, it has a Home button, and it uses the Lightning connector. The iPod Touch is now 6.1 mm thick and weighs 88 grams. It has a Lightning connector port too, in addition to the headphone jack. The screen is bigger; it's a 4" display, the same as the iPhone 5. It runs on a dual-core A5 processor that's twice as fast as the previous model. Graphics are claimed to be seven times faster. The battery allows for 40 hours of audio playback or 8 hours of video playback. The camera has been upgraded to a 5MP sensor. The iPod Touch comes in colors now. But not grape. Apple also took the wraps off what they call "EarPods." They're like earbuds, but they don't form a seal within the ear. They let air flow continue, and a tiny speaker directs the sound into the ear. The EarPods will come standard with the iPhone 5 and with the new revisions of the iPod Nano, and iPod Touch.
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