The queuing for the iPhone 5 has already started, 8 days before the phone launches

This year the annual “iPhone camping” started eight full days before the new iPhone 5 actually becomes available in stores. The line at the Fifth Avenue store in New York is already pretty long and has some colorful characters.


The first two people in line Hazem Sayed, 54, and Sage, 31, are working together and are using the opportunity to promote their location-based social app, Vibe.


Then there’s number 3 and number 4 – Jessica Mellow, 27, and Keenen Thompson, 22 – who are reportedly holding hands. In a plot twist worthy of a cheesy romcom, those two met when they were the first two in line for the iPhone 4S last year.

The youngest and, surprisingly, the most business-minded one is Jackie Lin, 15, who was planning to sell his spot in line to someone with more money than patience. Lin reconsidered when Gazelle (who buy smartphones) told the first few people in line that they will be sponsoring their iPhone 5.

See? Waiting in line is not extreme fanboyism, people are there to get some free publicity or with a money making scheme in mind. You can read more details on the ones brave enough to live on a sidewalk for a week over at Fortune.

Apple's iPhone 5 event live coverage

The Apple event is underway and the star of the show will be the new iPhone, though we expect to see a couple of new iPods as well. Here's the place where we'll be uploading the new info as soon as it becomes available, so make sure to keep an eye on this space.



Apple doesn't do live streaming, unfortunately, so we can't just embed a live video stream from the event as we usually do. Those Cupertino guy sure like being mysterious, don't they?

We've all seen the many leaked photos of various components, even whole prototypes, heard about what features the iPhone 5 will or won't have, now we're just waiting for Tim Cook to take the stage and put an end to the guesswork.

And Tim Cook is on stage!



He took some time to give us the statistics on Mac and Mountain Lion - there have been 7 million updates to Mountain Lion, Mac market share is up 27% in July.

iPads are on the rise too - 17 million were sold this quarter, bringing the total to 84 million. Their tablet market share went up from 62% to 68% over the last year and iPads account for 91% of all tablet web traffic.



There are 700,000 apps in the App Store, 250,000 of which have been "tailored" to the iPad apps. 90% of all apps are downloaded each month, with an average customer having over 100 apps.





Phil Schiller takes the stage and says "I'm here to talk about the iPhone." And goes on to introduce the iPhone 5!

It's made entirely out of aluminium. It's only 7.6mm thick - 18% thinner - and weighs 112g, 20% lighter than the 4S.





The display is a Retina, keeping the 326ppi pixel density. It's 4" big with 16:9 aspect ratio and 640x1136 resolution. The bigger screen fits five rows of icons and all the software has been updated to show more content on the screen. Old apps will be letterboxed.



The screen has better colors too, with 44% more color saturation. It features the Integrated touch display as we expected - the touch sensors are integrated right into the display. With one layer less, the screen will be sharper.

In terms of connectivity, you get HSPA+, DC-HSDPA and, of course, LTE with up to 100Mbps speeds. Apple has used a single chip for voice and data and a single radio chip. Major North America carriers are covered.

Wi-Fi supports a/b/g/n standards and goes up to 150Mbps.

The chipset is brand new - A6. It offers double the CPU and double the GPU performance. Apple seems to be using a smaller manufacturing process, because they say the chip is 22% smaller.





Apple is promising console-level graphics and showed a game demo to prove it.

How does this affect the battery? It's better than that of the 4S. The iPhone 5 will be good for up to 225 hours of standby, 8 hours of talk time over 3G, up to 8 hours of browsing over 3G or LTE.

The camera seems to be the same - 8MP BSI sensor, F/2.4 aperture and there's a sapphire crystal protecting it. Apple has made the camera 25% smaller to fit the thinner body.



Apple is promising better low-light performance thanks to a next-gen ISP. The new iPhone will capture photos 40% faster. It can do panoramas too - producing whopping 28MP images.
As far as video goes, the new iPhone shoots 1080p but boasts improved video stabilization and features face detection.

The front-facing camera has been updated to 720p - FaceTime HD. FaceTime will work over cell networks now too.

The iPhone 5 features three microphones - on the front, on the bottom and on the back. The speaker design is improved too and features a noise-cancelling earpiece and wideband audio.

Moving on to the connector - as expected, Apple has moved to a new smaller connector, called Lighting. The new connector features 8 pins and is 80% smaller. It has improved durability and is reversible (no more guessing which end is up!). For compatibility with older cables and accessories, there's an unattractive looking converter.



Apple is dedicating a lot of time to talk about their new Maps. They've got voice guided navigation, 3D and satellite imagery, 3D flyover.

Safari has been updated too, it's now got full-screen mode. And it features iCloud tabs, which works similarly to Google Chrome's tab syncing.

Siri has been enhanced as well. You can get sports scores and standings. It can also recommend movies, but that includes some usual Siri sass.

Enough software features, let's talk iPhone colors. Hold on to your hats, the iPhone 5 will come in Black and White. No big surprises here. The aluminum finish will differ between the two colors - slate for the black one and silver for the white.



The pricing for the iPhone 5 has been revealed and there's nothing surprising. You can get it for $199 (16GB), $299 (32GB) or $399 (64GB) on contract.

The iPhone 3GS is cut, while the 4 and 4S get a lower price. The iPhone 4 will be free on contract (8GB) model, the 4S will be $99 (16GB).



Pre-orders start this Friday and it will ship on September 21. The next wave of shipments will start on September 28.

Apple iPhone 5 goes official with an A6 chipset and 4-inch screen

The iPhone 5 is now official. Apple has just unveiled its most latest iPhone to date.


As it turned out all the previous leaks of images and specs were on the spot. The Apple iPhone 5 features a 4-inch Retina display with a resolution of 1136x640 pixels (that's 326ppi), 100Mb LTE connectivity, dual-band Wi-Fi. The new iPhone is thinner - 7.6mm and lighter - 112 grams than its 4S counterpart.

The iPhone 5 runs on the Apple's latest A6 chipset, which is said to offer 2x faster processor and graphics performance. There is still no word on the number of cores and clock speeds though.

The camera features the same 8megapixel sensor as the on on the iPhone 4S, but the sensor is 25% smaller this time. There is a newly announced panorama mode, which obviously stitches together full res photos as the sample showcased had 28megapixel resolution.

The Apple iPhone 5 also comes with an upgraded front-facing camera, which now supports 720p video recording.

The new specs sheet features three microphones, noise-cancelling earpiece, smaller speaker and brand-new Lightning connector. The latter is 80% smaller, has 8 pins and is reversible. An adapter for the old 30-pin cables has been announced as well.

The iPhone 5 is naturally going to run on iOS 6. Apple didn't announced any new and unseen iOS feature tonight, so we assume you've probably know everything by now. Still, you are more than welcome to check out our iOS 6 extended preview here.

The pre-orders for the iPhone 5 starts on September 14. The couriers will be knocking on your doors as early as September 21 if you live in USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Singapore or Hong Kong. 22 more countries will join the fun on September 28, while before the end of the year the iPhone 5 markets number will grow up to 100.

Unsurprisingly, the Apple iPhone 5 is going to cost $199 with a two-year contract in the States. And as the new signing joins the team, the 3GS is out of the door.

The 8GB Apple iPhone 4 and the 16GB iPhone 4S models will be still available for free and $99 on a contract, respectively.

Finally, the iOS 6 free update will hit the previous generations of the iPhone on September 19.

Apple iPhone 5 promo video is now up, watch it here

Apple’s event is now over and the company’s website is finally back up to normal operation. It gave us various specs of the new iPhone 5 and also the video that Apple showed during its presentation, so now you can watch it too. 

 

Check out the video, presented by Jony Ive himself along with other famous Apple employees like Scott Forstall and Bob Mansfield.


The promo does a great job of explaining all the new features, but are they enough to convince you to get one?

EDITORIAL: Why did the iPhone 5 skimp on true innovation?

Today’s announcement was one of the most hotly anticipated industry events. I waited and waited, ready to be wowed. But now that it’s over, I have a bad taste in my mouth (and it’s not the Chinese I had for dinner).

These few past months I followed the iPhone leaks as closely as possible and during all this time I just hoped there will be more to the new iPhone than they suggested. Well, unfortunately, that was it. Even Samsung made a better job of keeping their Galaxy S III under wraps before it was ready for announcement.


The upgrades are easy to spot. The new iPhone is impressively slim and light and it comes with Apple’s next gen A6 processor, which is up to 2 times faster. The iPhone 5 has a single radio chip supplying GSM, HSDPA, CDMA and LTE communication while going easy on the battery. At 4 inches, the screen is certainly bigger and has a more movie-friendly aspect ratio. I’m not going to get into all the iOS6 specific features since those are coming to the iPhone 4S anyway.

On the negative side, the iPhone 5 screen is only 4 inches big, and not only this, but only height was added, which, for instance, would bring no real benefit in most games and would help web browsing only in landscape mode. The camera is mostly the same as on the 4S, and LTE connectivity in Europe is still as scarce as water in the Sahara to be really worth it. Finally, the new sleeker connectivity jack renders all previous docking accessories obsolete.

Honestly, I’m already tired of hearing Apple’s stale remarks how the new iPhone or the new iPod was Apple’s best thing so far. What I wanted to see today on stage was pure innovation, something that would again open new doors and make other manufacturers lose their breath in trying to catch up.

Instead, what I got was a predictable phone with unexciting specs; a phone that I would hardly call cutting edge, top-of-the-line, and all those labels that usually go hand in hand with Apple’s latest. After all, the iPhone has always been the most expensive SIM-free smartphone on the market.

Sure, people will probably continue to buy it in millions, since once it’s out, it would be the most sensible buy, if you are after an iPhone. But I still have that bad taste in my mouth. The iPhone 5 failed to meet my expectations. I didn’t have a feature wishlist, except perhaps a seriously bigger screen. But most of all, I expected to be surprised. Well, none of these two things happened. And I wonder, who’s to blame? Is it me, or is it Apple that’s changing into a conservative phone maker, who likes to play it safe like Nokia used to, before it became clear it’s not getting them anywhere.

I’m more than sure that somebody in South Korea is having a big party right now. More than anything, it feels like this year’s iPhone is Apple skipping a turn a second year in a row all the while Android and Windows Phone have been seriously upping their game moves.

So what do you think, is the Apple iPhone 5 everything you expected it to be?

Apple iPhone 5 spotted sitting next to a $3,000 metal case

Apple’s iPhone 5 event is tomorrow, but this doesn’t stop luxurious gadget Gresso from issuing a newsletter advertising its future premium iPhone 5 case today. The iPhone 5 can be seen lying nonchalantly on the photo next to the case.


Dubbed Gresso Revolution, the case is made of solid titanium, which has been selected for its lightness and rigidity. It’s also scratch- and water-resistant thanks to the PVD coating.




Just 999 of the luxury cases will be manufactured, so it’s going to be pretty rare. With a $3,000 price tag and the company logo engraved on an 18k gold inset, we never expected it to sell like hotcakes either.

The case will be available from mid-October.