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iPhone 5 review

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Apple's iPhone remains a beautifully built, top performer  

Manufacturer: Apple

The iPhone 5 is more than just Apple's latest high-end smartphone. In a world of huge slabs of phone the iPhone's thin profile makes it different to the Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z, HTC One, BlackBerry Z10, Nokia Lumia 925 and the rest of the high-end phone lineup. For more comparisons see Group test: what's the best smartphone?; iPhone 5 vs iPhone 4S comparison review and Samsung Galaxy S3 vs Apple iPhone 5 comparison review.
In our iPhone 5 review we test the iPhone 5 performance, look at iPhone 5 build and design, and check out the iPhone 5 cameras. We also check out new iPhone 5 features and the iPhone 5's software.

iPhone 5 review: Performance

Confirmed by our lab tests, everything about the iPhone 5's performance has been augmented from its predecessor the iPhone 4S, in this contrarily smaller mobile phone handset.

iPhone 5 review: A6 Processor

iPhone 5
We can't honestly say that on any day we picked up an iPhone 4 or even 4S and thought ‘this is a great phone – but I just wish it could be a little bit faster'. Yet the new-found double-speed action does end up bringing you a device that's really just more moreish to use.
Apple is playing coy in the numbers game for the new A6 chip, although technicians who have dissected the phone are pointing to a much bigger breakthrough than may be obvious.
The A6 appears to be Apple's own in-house chip design, still using the ARM architecture but not as prèt-a-porter as most smartphone makers typically specify. It's still a dual-core processor, like that in the 4S, but memory is double the iPhone 4S' at 1GB.
Crucially, the architecture may be more like the as-yet unreleased ARM Cortex-A15 reference design rather than Cortex-A9 that has been staking out the ground for leading smartphone designs. The graphics engine now appears to be a tri-core processor too.

iPhone 5 review: Benchmark Results

Apple says the new A6 processor is up to twice as fast as the A5 in the iPhone 4S. Our benchmarks of processor and memory performance with Geekbench 2 suggested that Apple was being economical with the truth – by understating the staggering increase in speed.
The iPhone 5 scored 1650 points in Geekbench 2, compared to the 4S' score of 632. That's over 2.6 times faster.
When it came to gaming performance, the iPhone 5 ran the Egypt HD test within the GLBenchmark 2.5 test at 38fps, which is exactly twice the framerate of the 4S' which scored 19fps.
iPhone 5
Browsing the web was super speedy. When tested for JavaScript rendering speed, we found the iPhone 5 to again be around twice as fast – scoring 903ms in the SunSpider test, against 1891ms for an iPhone 4S; both using iOS 6.
In general use, the iPhone 5 feels incredibly snappy, opening apps and loading websites quicker than ever before. We haven't tried EE's new LTE service yet, but even web browsing over 3G feels appreciably faster.
And in our tests, it was. Not just JavaScript, but 3G cellular is much quicker – almost twice the speed.
We took a series of network speed tests over a short time period from the same location, using the same Three nano-SIM card. The iPhone 4S averaged 7.92 Mbps download, and 2.34 Mbps upload from our office location in London. Peak speed recorded in any single run was 8.78 Mbps.

iPhone 5 review: Features

The stand-out outward attribute of the iPhone 5 is its larger screen. Not a huge expanse of space in both directions as Google's hardware friends have uniformly decided is the way to sway tech-loving buyers – notably the Samsung Galaxy S3 with its extravagant 4.8in display. The iPhone 5 raises its screen estate by simply extending the screen's height by 14mm, keeping the width identical.
The new 640 x 1136-pixel display is still IPS, only even richer in colour saturation while still looking more natural than the slightly cloying OLED alternatives. And importantly the Apple iPhone 5's screen still has the pixel-hiding Retina resolution of 326ppi.
Operating the iPhone 5 with its longer screen is a doddle. Unlike the semi-tablet sized phones with 4.5in or larger screens, you really can reach the whole screen to operate it easily still with just one hand. Pick up an iPhone 5 though, and you'll notice a new featherweight quality. Down at 115g against the 4S' 141g, it feels wafer-like, almost too light in fact. Beautifully balanced, its mass is evenly distributed to offset any bias toward top or bottom.
The build quality has been described as jewel-like with reason. Swiss watch is another inescapable analogy, echoed from Apple's sound bite at the iPhone 5's launch.
The move to aluminium construction may be a step in the right direction though; and not just by helping to lose headline grams from the all-up weight. It provides a more handleable object for the fingertips. Hardened glass front and back didn't just lend the iPhone 4 chic obsidian bling – it could make the handset a slippery slab. The iPhone 5 is now built around an anodised aluminium backplate that allows a tad more purchase in the hand. Durability may suffer a little though. In the case of the black model especially, daily use is likely to create small nicks in the anodised coating, so to keep the iPhone 5 pristine a case is as useful as ever.
In white, the iPhone 5 looks less juvenile than the 4S blanc; diamond-polished bevelled edges and a satin aluminium back make it much more unisex now. In black, it's pure stealth bomber, mixing brushed metal slate-anodised back with mirror polished front bevels and gleaming black glass front.
This tech user is not so convinced by the drive for thin though. Given the still all-too short runtime of today's handsets – and that includes the iPhone, despite it out-lasting every average fizzling Android – we would rather keep with something like 9.5mm and 141g if it meant using the space and weight budget wisely, with a battery to comfortably last three rather than two days.


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