The Smartphone market is flooded with the new devices, each boasting its features and vying for attention by adding more powerful chips, true to life displays and featuring better battery life. Amidst this sea of smartphones, there is a phone that once ruled the smartphone arena; it’s the Apple’s iPhone 5. The iPhone, when first launched was the sole deal snatcher. Back then, being the only smartphone of its kind, it didn’t face any competition. But the game has changed now. This latest mobile from Apple, which was out few months back, the launch of which was covered with enthusiasm and a lot of anxiety filled for tech enthusiast, is now outdated.
Let’s take a look at the features of the iPhone 5 and compare with what’s the latest in the market today. The Apple iPhone 5 price is nearly INR 45,000 which makes it the costliest phone in India but is it ‘the best phone ever’?
Reasons Why iPhone 5 May be Outdated : Hardware
Design
Design wise, the iPhone 5 is one of the best in the market along with others such as HTC One X+, Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC 8X. Made from Aluminum back and Gorilla Glass 2 at the front, the iPhone 5 is very light and looks similar to its previous version. But we have seen many cases of Aluminum back getting scratched easily. The display is increased from 3.5 to 4 inch but the width remains the same so as to fit in the hands perfectly. In terms of looks this is the biggest change made after the transition to iPhone 4. On the whole it looks nothing short of jewelry but we don’t expect that it gets scratched so easily despite spending so much cash.
Display
One of the significant changes that Apple made to its new version of iPhone is its display. The display has been increased to 4 inches with higher resolution of 1136 x 640 pixels and a pixel density of 326 ppi. With the increase in size, a whole new row of icons are incorporated in the screen. But we all know that iPhone is not the leader of the pack now when it comes to the screen. HTC One X has been known to have the best smartphone screen on this planet and HTC bested themselves with the launch of HTC Droid DNA sporting a 5 inch Super LCD 3 screen and a resolution of 1920 x1080 pixels taking its pixel density to an unbelievable 440 ppi which is way beyond the iPhone 5’s 326 ppi. The HTC Droid DNA beats the iPhone 5 as the best screen on the market quite easily.
Camera
The 8MP iSight camera in the iPhone 5 captures clear and crisp images in daylight but when it comes to image stabilization, low light image capture, the iPhone 5 lags behind others such as HTC One X+ and Nokia Lumia 920. Capturing the images through iPhone 5 in Panorama mode is easy, just a tap and move the phone. But the Google has blown away Apple with their new PhotoSphere feature in Android 4.2 JellyBean where you can capture your whole surrounding as opposed to simple Panorama. This feature is now available in the Nexus 4, Nexus 10 and Galaxy Nexus as well. Also even after a year of Google bringing simultaneous image and video recording, Apple has failed to deliver that feature. As of now, Nokia Lumia 920 has a better overall camera and the camera UI on the Android 4.2 is the best bringing iPhone 5 to nowhere.
Battery Life
Apple has yet to fit the biggest of the batteries with any of its line-up but still it is one of the top performers but at the lack of true multitasking. Android is the only smartphone OS with true multitasking capabilities and Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx HD is the best performer when it comes to the battery life. It can give over 14 hours of continuous video playback and well over a day of battery life no matter how tensely you use the device for.
Reasons Why iPhone 5 May be Outdated : Software
Operating System and User Interface
With iOS getting older, apart from multitasking in iOS3 and Notifications Bar in iOS 5, nothing spectacular or refreshing has come from Apple. The iOS is now getting boring as well as cluttered and there is still no competition to Android Widgets and Windows Phone 8 Live Tiles for displaying useful information without opening an app. Also, sharing files is still clunky; you still can’t attach RAR/ZIP files through E-mail. Even the application integration is nowhere near competitor platforms and iTunes is necessary to manage media and other useful stuff.
Voice Recognition
Siri might be flexible and better for playing with but the core needs of a personal voice assistant are all satisfied by Google Now. Also, Google Now is faster and more accurate at recognizing the voice and their various accents than the Siri. Siri can’t recognize as many languages as Google Now and can’t display information to majority countries. You also get offline support for voice recognition in Android but no such stuff from iOS as of now.
Applications
Google Play Store already 700,000 applications matching the sheer number of applications that are available on the Apple AppStore. Although the quality and design of the applications might not be there but mostly used applications by consumers are comparable to their iOS counterparts. Also you get a lot of customization and deep level integration applications on Google Play Store as opposed to the Apple’s walled garden.
Maps
In the quest of taking things under their control, Apple came up with their own version of maps. Though it had interesting features like ‘turn by turn’ and some gimmicks such as FlyOver, it failed big time and was in fact horrible as it showed some places as if they were hit by a catastrophe. Tim Cook had to give an apology for bad performance of their Maps. It is known to all that Google is coming up with its maps for the iOS 6 soon but no matter how good it is, it will not be as well integrated as Google Maps for Android. Long story short, Google Maps beats Apple Maps hands down, at least as of now.
Final Say
The iPhone 5 is not a bad smartphone at all. In fact what Apple came up with is no longer the best available in the market but at a hugely premium. It’s just to let you know that the most expensive smartphone and the device that caught the attention of millions of people round the world is already outdated.
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