iphone 5 first impressions

My wife and I were among the hordes who queued up for an iPhone 5 this morning.

First impressions on iPhone 5:

• Fast. Like really, really fast. Super fluid and responsive. Apps open instantly.
• Taller, thinner and lighter. It’s actually a bit awkward and foreign handling one for the first time, but you get used to it very quickly.
• Lightning connector is SUPER fast. I copied 12 albums from my laptop in to the iPhone 5 in 30 seconds or so. It used to take several minutes.
• The new earphones are awesome. Really good. Comfortable, stable in the ear, and the response is fantastic top to bottom.
• Do Not Disturb is set to become a heavily used feature on my iPhone 5.
• Increased Privacy options. I’ll delve into these a bit more and blog it separately, but I like what Apple have done here. The options focus on ensuring users understand what applications are doing with your data. Notably absent in Mail (I’m not sure about the developer API for email…).
• iOS 6 maps are as bad as everyone says they are. I’m looking forward to version 2, or Google bringing out the iOS 3rd party version of their maps app (not holding my breath for this though… Apple and Google are kind of arch rivals now).
• 3D maps are neat but useless in my opinion. Tracking and guessing on location searches (e.g. Red Square… C’mon…) is pretty poor.
• There is enough difference between iOS 5 and iOS 6 to make the user experience a bit junted…

So, there you go. Should you get one?

• If you’re in the middle of a contract you’d need to pay out in order to upgrade – No, not worth it.
• If you have a working iPhone 4 or 4S that’s got life left in it – No, wait a few months for Apple to iron out any hardware bugs. As a rule, this is how I usually purchase technology… let the early adopters beta test the product and then go for it once the initial broken things are sorted. I broke that rule this time around because I lost my iPhone 4 about a month and a half ago.
• Otherwise, yes – Go for it. So far I’m quite happy with it, and I’m not easily impressed by gadgets.

Overall I’m very happy with it – It’s a very nicely designed phone – but to be honest, had I not been at the end of my mobile contract, I probably would have stuck with my iPhone 4 for longer. In the end the timing was just right.