iPhone 5 announced and priced, available September 21
Apple has announced the iPhone 5, ending two years of face melting anxiety for that cocooned iPhone 4 to turn into a beautiful iPhone 5 butterfly. Fancy tech talk time: It's a 326 pixels per inch Retina display, four-inches. 1136 x 640 resolution. Same width as iPhone 4S, but taller. 7.6mm thick, 18 percent thinner than before. 112 grams, 20 percent lighter than the 4S. Old apps will run letterboxed.
For communication, the device's radio chip broadcasts across all of the legacy protocols like EV-DO and HSPA/+, as well as the latest, fastest system called LTE, which enables faster downloads and uploads. The iPhone 5 isn't the first LTE device by a long shot, but it's the first iPhone with LTE. Since Apple likes to avoid technical jargon in its branding, its calling it "Ultrafast Wireless."
Engadget is currently live blogging the event.
The iPhone, along with cousins iPad and iPod, has proven itself as a gaming device. A study late last year found 48 percent of total App Store revenue came from in-app transactions of free titles, with 24 percent derived from in-app purchases on paid titles. 1+1+2+1... that means 28 percent of iOS revenue came from normal paid apps.
The iPhone 5 has the same on-contract pricing as last year's 4S: $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB variant and $399 for 64GB version. It will be available September 21 in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
