iPhone 5 first impressions

Still have my iPhone 4, but went to the Apple store to check out the iPhone 5. It sounded great, but not too great, but I was wrong.

The first thing you notice is how light it is. It makes the iPhone 4 seem heavy, but it still feels well built and solid. And the mostly metal back is much better than the glass iPhone 4 and 4S. The phone is thinner, and lighter, and taller.

The taller screen looks better even at the same resolution. And the bigger screen is just better. Wide screen shows look great and having an extra row of apps on every screen is fantastic.

And the lightning connector is impressively small. Still if it is not faster, it sucks to make every previous accessory either incompatible or have to work with an adapter.

if all of the speed tests are true, this is a really impressive phone. I so want one! Ha!

How crappy is Apple’s new Lightning Adapter

So with the iPhone 5 Apple updated and downgraded it’s connector to the new lightning connector. The good news is it is smaller, and will work in either direction. The bad news is it is the same speed as the old adapter, sends less data, so many old accessories won’t work, and for those that do it requires an adapter at $28 for a direct or $39 for a cable.

Youch! Honestly i would rather have had the old adapter still so all my old devices would work. Especially since Apple said they won’t make docks for the iPhone 5, and i prefer my iPhone and iPods in docks!

Apple has announced the iPhone 5 coming out next week

iPhone

And they didn’t name it the next iPhone, which is even better. It has a powerful quad core A6 processor and a taller screen, which allows one more row of icons, or bigger 1135 by 640 16×9 apps, which is great for watching movies and old apps show up as letterboxed instead of stretched. It has a better 8 Megapizel camera, and it’s towards you camera is now 720p for facetime. It has a new connector called Lightning that should be faster and is much smaller, but will require all new accessories or adapter cables.

Nothing revolutionary, but certainly very cool. I would love to replace my iPhone 4 with one, but it is not going to happen. Too broke after surgery and possible not having work for a while. It is $199, $299 or $499 for 16, 32 or 64 GB versions.

Pebble E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android Kickstarter Program

The Pebble e-paper watch is a very cool accessory for your Smartphone that is currently having a kickstarter campaign, and these people have already made a product for Blackberries.

The only downside it is uses the old Bluetooth 2.1 tech instead of the new lowpowered bluetooth that the iPhone 4S has, so it will drain battery life.

Still a very cool idea, and a product that will have a future.