Banana Scoop

The time is upon us! Releasing on the exact same day (or at least shipping) as Borderlands 2, the iPhone 5 will hit shelves this month to what Apple hopes to be record breaking sales. People already predict that the sales of the new apple device will help the GDP by an unprecedented .5%, which is pretty freaking ridiculous considering that a single gadget could bolster our economy in that way. We’ll have to wait to see the numbers, however, and will just have to be content drooling over the new pictures and screen shots we got from today’s Apple conference. I’ll cover a few of the really intriguing upgrades in the body of this article.

As you’ve probably already seen, Apple has finally unveiled the newest in their line of smart phones, the iPhone 5. With its shiny new, and slightly larger screen as well as a new version of the iOS to be released alongside it, this will be an incredibly strong opening for the line. With the increase in screen size by .5 inches and a lighter body, this phone epitomizes just how far we can get in society as far as sleek and shiny yet functional. While I’m still skeptical of release bugs that will undoubtedly be noticed within the first few weeks of release, I’m incredibly excited for the rather large increase in screen realty compared to its predecessors. the new iOS will be sporting many new features as well, including a rather nice upgrade for both the maps/directions app and siri among the most important updates I could manage to find. Additionally, with an increased aspect ratio, the iPhone 5 can now sport an additional app on the home bar as opposed to the originals. While this isn’t a major game changer, I found it to be a relatively nice addition to the phone as I have had cases where I would have liked to add if nothing more than a little more space for organization on the home screen.

The video above touches base on a lot of the upgraded hardware specs of the new phone, although I would like to touch base on the new power cord system they seem to have come up with for their brand new line of fancy gadgets. Dubbed the lightning bold port, their new I/O port, this new tech developed by Intel, dubbed ‘light port’, is an optical cable interface that allows the transfer of data over speeds of 10GBps, which is pretty ridiculous even by today’s standards. According to many, this ability could scale to well over 100GBps, but we’ll wait to see just how far we can take it with data transfer. Additionally, while the data transfer rate is probably the biggest thing that jumped out at me from watching both the conference and various videos about the phone afterward, I can deduce that they designed this cable to be an end-all be-all of the cable world. Not only are its speeds ridiculous, but this type of cable also has the ability to provide enough bandwidth to replace connector types such as USB and SATA, all while additionally handling the performance of types such as SATA. While this doesn’t seem like a big idea to many (after all, who cares about a power cord?), I am thoroughly impressed with the display, and can’t wait to test it out.

I’ll touch base with apps for a little bit, considering you all will probably just end up seeing for yourselves the moment you get your hands on this brilliant piece of technology. I did cover both maps and siri, the latter of which will come packed with hundreds more commands to issue at any time you want. I will cover what may just be my favorite feature of this phone thus far, though I’m sure that there may be better examples to use. The fact that you can now face time over cellular signals completely blows me out of the water, primarily because I’m not sure how the companies will react to this. Essentially, with this phone, you will be able to video chat anyone you want (with an iPhone) from anywhere you want. If you don’t find that the least bit really awesome, there’s nothing more I can do to change your mind.

Prices start at 199$ for the 16GB model, and will begin shipping on the 21st. They can be preordered now, however, at many of your local retailers or cellular provider stores. Make sure you pick yours up quickly, however, as I’m sure that these will run out just as the iPad’s did during their release a few months/years back.