The new iPhone is finally here. Yes, people would line up to buy it even if it was made of bottle-caps and dog-poo, but it isn't. It's predictably a very good phone. How good? Let's see how it compares to the top competition.
The following chart is a look at how these phones measure up by the numbers. Now, numbers certainly aren't everything, but they aren't nothing, either.
Note: the chart below compares the U.S. versions of all these phones. In the U.K. the One X and Galaxy S III both have quad-core processors, but here in the U.S. those don't work with our LTE (yet), so we've got the dual-core Snapdragon S4 in there. Also, the prices are where each phone starts (the iPhone 5 has three levels for different storage sizes) with a carrier contract. Got it? Good.
Obviously, the most noticeable difference between the 4S and the 5 is the screen. It has finally gone the now-standard 16x9 route. On paper it looks like it will hold its own against the Lumia 920 and the One X, but Apple is using a new screen technology from Sharp, so we'll see if it's as good as everyone hopes.
The A6 chip sounds awfully nice, but we didn't get any of the particulars on clock speed or number of cores, so we shall see.
LTE of course is a very good thing, and it was a necessary move to keep up with the others. As someone who tests a lot of phones, once you use LTE for a little while, everything else feels like you're crawling. At the same time, it's a bummer that NFC was left out. No, people aren't screaming for it, yet, but putting it on an iPhone certainly would have helped the burgeoning technology's cause. Also, no word yet on the size of the battery. Apple claims it's vastly surperior to the one in the 4S, but we'd be surprised if it can measure up to the monster in 3,300 mAh battery in the RAZR MAXX HD. We'll see. All and all, by the numbers, the iPhone 5 certainly holds its own.