iPhone 5 has improvements, drawbacks

By Roy Herrera

The highly anticipated iPhone 5 made its debut Friday.

With customers starting to line up in front of Apple stores early last week, one can assume they were excited to get their hands on the newest version of the phone.

Apple claims they have made various improvements to the iPhone 5 from the iPhone 4S. Here is a quick run-down of the changes Apple made:

iPhone 5 Specs

• LTE capability

• 18 percent thinner

• 20 percent lighter

• Four-inch retina display screen

• A6 chip

• Improved Siri

• New lighting connector

• New headphones

Out of all of the improvements in the new iPhone, the one that stands out the most is the A6 microchip. With this new chip, users are able to browse the Web and launch apps much faster than with the A5 chip in the iPhone 4S. Also, the graphics on the games are vastly improved due to the A6 chip and the vibrant new retina display. With a better CPU, the battery is not drained as quickly. Users get up to eight hours of LTE browsing (which is the fastest way to browse the Internet on a smart phone), eight hours of talk time or 10 hours of video playback.

Siri is now capable of answering more questions than before. Also, Siri can read you sports scores, Facebook posts and tweets, and can also post on Facebook and Twitter.

The included ear buds have been changed so they stay inside the ears, which is a plus.

The camera has been improved to record in HD, and Facetime is in HD, as well. It also has a panoramic feature that allows the camera to capture everything around you.

The one thing that has drawn backlash is the new lightning connector. While it opens up more space for other key components in the iPhone, having a new connector means all the other cables you purchased for various Apple products before the iPhone 5 are completely useless for the iPhone 5. That is, unless you buy a separate adapter for $29.

Overall, the iPhone 5 does have some nice improvements, but I wouldn’t recommend iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users consider their devices obsolete just yet. If you have any of the other previous iPhones, this might be the time to upgrade. For those who don’t have an iPhone and want to get their hands on one of them, this is the best one to get.

The iPhone 5 comes in black or white. The price ranges from $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model and $399 for the 64GB model. The iPhone 5 is carried by Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.