Apple iPhone 5 announced and iOS 6 full details emerges

The iPhone 5 handset has been officially unveiled by Apple at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for San Francisco. Senior Vice President of Apple’s Worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said the new iPhone 5 will be the thinnest and lightest iteration of the device so far – it will be 7.6mm thin and weigh just 112g, making it 18 per cent lighter than the iPhone 4S. Schiller says the iPhone 5 is made entirely of galss and aluminium and is easily “the most beautiful product we’ve ever made.”

“”It’s because of your hand,” said Schiller of the iPhone 5’s design. “It should fit there. That’s how we designed the iPhone 5.””

The new iPhone 5 boasts a 4 inch display with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1136 x 640 screen resolution.

“This is the most accurate display in the industry,” said Schiller “The touch sensors are integrated right into the display itself. We removed a layer and made it sharper. This is the world’s most advanced display, and I couldn’t be prouder of it.”

It will also feature ‘Ultrafast Wireless’ : New Wi-Fi, 2.4ghz and 5ghz on 802.11n. The iPhone 5 is powered by an A6 chip which Apple is twice as fast as previous iterations. Overall, Apple are promising a huge jump in performance from a device which is 22 per cent smaller than its predecessor.

The iPhone 5 has an improved battery-life of 225 hours on standby, 8 hours using LTE, 40 hours of music playback and 10 hours of Wi Fi.

It has an iSight cam embedded, with 8 mega pixel sensor, five element lens, dynamic low light mode and precision lens alignment. The device allows for shared photo streams, panoramic shots, noise reduction in video capture and faster photo capture. The iPhone 5’s FaceTime camera is 720 p HD with backside illumination and face detection.

“Everything has been updated in iPhone 5, and that goes for the audio system as well,” said Schiller. He then revealed the iPhone 5 contains 3 microphones on its bottom, front, and back.

The iPhone 5 comes with a new, smaller connector that can be ported into current three-pin connectors. The device also runs on iOS 6, which Schiller said has been designed from the beginning to take advantage of the iPhone 5. The device includes over 200 new features including: the all new Maps app with Apple-designed cartography and turn-by-turn navigation; Facebook integration; Passbook organisation; and even more Siri features and languages.

The iPhone 5 comes in white and silver or black and slate. The iPhone 5 will be released on the 21st of September 2012 and will be priced at $199 (16GB), $299 (32GB) and $399 (64GB).

Apple iOS 6:
Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS Software at Apple, took to the stage at Apple’s iPhone 5 announcement today to demonstrate the firm’s new and improved mobile operating system iOS 6, which the firm claims “is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.”

He kicked off proceedings by demonstrating one of the software’s 200 new features, the Maps app, saying: “We’ve built a search engine in to find POIs — we have over 100m points of interest and we’ve built in turn by turn directions.

“All of this works in landscape in addition to portrait. And that, is turn by turn. As we take you around turns we use a cinematic camera angle to fly you around.”

Usability looks simple and imagery is sharp. There’s also 3D modelling of the actual maps, so details are on-point.

“We’ve also got great satellite imagery. You take two fingers and you can change the camera angle. When you tap on the 3D button, you get taken into flyover.”

The Safari web browser has also been given a major makeover, and can now be viewed in full-screen mode, making good use of the iPhone 5’s stunning 4-inch display.

Apple has also introduced some enhancements to the phone app; users can now automatically send an SMS back when they cannot take a call.

Better social integration means users can share their information and snaps instantly with family and friends, and stream content to their social network accounts, including Twitter and Facebook.

Apple’s voice recognition software Siri has also been given a boost; the software supports more languages and is smarter, faster and more easy to use.

Oh, and it has good taste in movies: “Siri has also learned a lot more about movies, so I can ask: ‘can you recommend a good movie in theatres,” said Forstall.