The screen is a pretty normal size; is it just the apple ears that make it long? Or is this just an assumed problem?

Since several of my friends have broken screens of their iphones from minor drops I have no plans to buy such expensive and fragile device. In my hands it would not last very long given that I recently managed to accidently crack screen of my Samsung B2100 thats supposed to be nearly indestructible.

Did iOS 6 help them say yes too?

All the corners of my phone are burred and scratched from dropping and the screen is fine. What is 'probability'? :v

Like phant, bizarrely the iOS6 update makes my old GS perform much better than 5.

Thirding that, if I haven't already. A noticeable increase of responsiveness overall.

The script supervisor for the show I'm working on upgraded to the iOS 6, and all of his 3000+ photos (almost all backups of the continuity pictures of the set and costumes) suddenly disappeared. They reappeared shortly after, but it was still a bad scare.

Apparently people are seeing wierd behaviour around photos and ringtones etc. My devices are all fine, but there way be teething problems.

I just don't care because I can finally hide all the browser UI on my phone. :V

The iPhone 5 has an aluminum back, and the front screen seems to be fit much better than the 4 and 4S glass fronts and backs.

I've dropped my 3GS a couple dozen times, and once managed to chip the edges of the glass on gravel, but no shattering. I think it was a better design, and I think Apple learned their lesson from the 4 in designing the 5.

There's a drop test video out there that shows a 5 beating an SIII, but I haven't seen it myself.

There's also the anecdotal evidence of my father to consider: he has demolished several phones, running them over, losing them under the lawn while laying sod, dropping them all the time. We got him a 4 in an Otterbox, and the phone has nary a mark on it. If its a serious problem for you, there are solutions.


I'm going to say yes.



It's taller than the previous models. I had a chance to handle one today, and it seems acceptable to me. The entire screen is still within my thumb's range of motion (not that this was an issue), and it's not too tall to be weird. I think they did it just right: make the phone taller, not wider. That's the problem with cafeteria tray sized Androids. Too damn wide for one hand or my pocket.

One note, on battery life: previously, my 3GS died anywhere between 5% and 12% battery, particularly if I received a call, text, or the GPS chip turned on. Over the weekend I saw it die initially at 15% to 17%, though it made it as low as 7% today before I got to a charger. So I'm not certain if I lost about 10% of reported battery life, and I didn't note actual usage.

The 17% -> dead was in a poor reception environment; the stadium has terrible connectivity during football games, even with 3 bars. I think that might have been a factor. Later on we couldn't connect to Facebook or Twitter on a friend's 4S on the same network as me, despite 3-4 bars.

Yeah regarding size I was surprised other complaints since most flagship phones are larger.

I already know those phones are too big, but I hadn't found the upper bound of acceptability for myself.

Water is another enemy. Even just this summer alone my phone accidently got into water, mud and sand multiple times. Luckily my B2100 can take it. I can't even count how many times I have dropped it hard. On one occasion it fell from a scaffolding at construction site from a third floor level and crashed on concrete floor hovever no major damage only few minor scratces. This summer I broke the screen, it happened at metal music festival when I tripped in moshpit, fell backwards with my phone in back pocket and three other guys also tripped and landed on me. Ground was asphalt end there were some gravel on it. Apearently a few hundred kg of pressure was enough to crack the screen hovever I got it cheaply replaced. A smartphone in such an accident likely would be wrecked beyond repair.
When there will be a smartphone awailable that offers similar or better abuse resistance then I probably will consider an upgrade.

Just picked up my 5 and already irritated, but only because the AT&T rep did the setup for me instead of letting me do it myself. Had to reset the phone to get my iCloud restore going.

You need three antennas to do it right now on a CDMA+LTE network, and the iPhone 5 only has two. See AnandTech.

That's why when I got my GNex, I made it abundantly clear that I would do all the setup myself. The Verizon rep was shocked when I just up and factory reset my old phone while waiting for her to unbox the GNex, she'd assumed I'd want her to manually transfer my contacts to it from my Droid 2 using their computer. She had no fucking clue that Google contacts are stored in the cloud and synced with any Android device I sign in on, reinforcing my opinion that most Verizon reps only learn whatever marketing blips they've been told by Verizon about any particular phone/OS, and don't bother to learn a damn thing more.

Water and blunt trauma are entirely different threats to appliances, and they're not comparable. A well-sealed phone (with no headphone jack because it's some paleolithic thing) can still be totally destroyed by a short drop, which is what everyone is talking about.

But say 'smartphone' more. I'll wait before describing all the amusing trauma my phone has survived, despite not being made of bronze like yours.

My dad had a similar phone as that Samsung Sky Captain is talking about, though a flip phone. They're pretty heavy duty, but lacking in features. Some people need that more than mobile data, which is fine.

It took my dad two tries to kill that phone. Both times he ran it over with a truck and trailer (accidentally). First time only killed the outside display, second time killed the whole thing. I don't know if the Otterbox he has on his 4S can handle even one pass.

I've taken iphones apart that work spread out over a table and seen plenty of drug addicts with the case folded or screen missing huge bits. It just depends what's damaged, and stonephones just have less that can go wrong.

Not seeing much of an improvement with iOS6 on my 4s but then I wasn't really expecting that much of one.
Although Phant is right for once, the iOS6 maps app is crap.
Maybe getting a 5 in the near future, planning on moving soon which will entail getting a new job, and seeing as the 4s is work issue I won't be keeping it.

Exactly what's wrong with Maps? I have a Maps app that came with my iPhone 4, which I mostly use for checking satellite imagery as opposed to following directions. Never had a problem with it, though.

iOS 6 Maps uses Apple's own custom data while iOS 5 and earlier use Google's. In many places the mapping and point-of-interest data is inferior or entirely lacking. Transit routing is gone, too.

Let's just say they fucked up the maps a bit and leave it at that.
It's at the point where there are now several sites dedicated to showing the best, or should I say the worst of the iOS 6 mapping goofs.

To further note as was pointed out by one tech writer ... *Edit and I found it, it was business insider
July story

There is another story out there about the fact that Apple has heard the feedback and is looking to hire... twenty new guys to match Google Maps.
So 100 employes of which per Ars Techinca only 40 of which are full time map guys (Most are general OS guys) and they are looking to hire twenty more VS a literal thousand plus people with tons of contractors out there gathering data every day.

Meaning we can expect a quality product form Apple based on man hours if one of their employees can do the work of a tenth the time as a Google Employee in.... five years.

There's no direct relationship between employee numbers and quality. Making Maps actually fucking work doesn't require 5000 guys and if they get 95% quality with a smart team, who cares?

Aside from bein broken and not working, Maps is a big improvement in my area over the never-updated google version we've been stuck with.

Yeah, who cares about music, audiobooks, or just listening to anything interesting you might have recorded, Apple Way is Best Way.

Though, I can't help but remember the very same tune from Apple fanboys before, such as one USB port, dropping FireWire, and a lot of other stuff that were selling points until now always suddenly become palaeolithic to fanboys as soon as Big Appl dropped them


It's like saying tri-wheel bike offers the same quality as car. Oh, well, if you only need to cover 50 metre distance, maybe it does. But, Google needs 1000 employees to cover whole world (slowly). Apple at best with 50 can cover big US cities to same quality, equivalent of 50 meter distance, but hey, it's not like they have a lot of buyers outside of metropolises anyway.