[Archived] New iphone 5s

[old darwen blue]

To be released shortly. Any takers or views on it folks?

[cmb211087]

All marketing hype. Nothing really stands out as something none of the other high end phones on the market don't already have (except finger scanning which is a gimmick). The 64bit OS and chip stuff is pure gimmick too. To utilize 64bit properly you really need over 4gb of ram to get a noticeable effect (I think the iPhone has 1gb??).

[Clitherover]

No wonder so many more people have Android phones now when Apple's ''budget'' model is nearly 500 quid. For people with more money than sense.

[M-K]

How do people actually get the chance to buy the latest phone when it comes out?

My current two-year contract won't be over until February 2015, and iPhone are normally released in the autumn. So I could either get the previous year's outdated pikey model or stay 7 months on a contract I don't need to be paying.

Are all Apple fans on pay-as-you-go? Contracts sychronised to end in September?

[J*B]

Synchronise your contract with September (usually done by taking two contracts out, your existing one then a new one for a new release iphone). Spend months 10 and 11 on the phone to your network complaining, trying to get your tariff as low as it will go. Buy your contract out at month 12, and upgrade to the newest iPhone.

[Tom]

Not wowed by it but I'm still on an iPhone 4 which is sluggish now so time to upgrade

I'm going on O2 refresh which is you pay a monthly amount for the phone and a amount for the contract

Its a 2 year contract but at any time can pay the phone off and upgrade

Sadly my bank doesn't offer insurance so will need to take some out but not using O2 again for that price will probably use insurance 2 go as recommended by Martin Lewis

[K-Hod]

Looks decent, but for me they're just relying on brand loyalty. Thing is with iPhones, the apps are excellent, but being railroaded into using iTunes is just a massive ball ache.

After 3 iPhones, I just upgraded to a Galaxy S4 and to be honest it's fantastic, could definitely recommend.

[M-K]

Thing is with iPhones, the apps are excellent, but being railroaded into using iTunes is just a massive ball ache.

Why would you *not* want all the apps in one place?

[K-Hod]

Why would you *not* want all the apps in one place?

What I mean is, dragging and dropping is tried and tested with PCs and technology, syncing with itunes takes too long, and is more convoluted than it needs to be. At any rate, for me iTunes is a shocking piece of software.

[M-K]

Fair enough, I was confusing iTunes with the App Store there anyway.

I've used iTunes for a while for syncing with an iPod. It works fine for me, although it has replaced half of the album artwork with generic icons after I moved the library to another disc. By all accounts it works better on a Mac than a PC.

[Ricky]

Tom, have you thought about buying it outright from apple? You could then put an Ovivo SIM card in it and save a few quid. Total cost for the 2 years would then be about £565 as the SIM card is just a one off price of £15.

[Paul]

Personally I enjoy my iPhone and it fulfills all my requirements but I won't be rushing out for an upgrade. When the time comes I'll get the new iPhone which I think will be in 3-4 months. It will be fun to play with iOS7 in a few days time.

It strikes me its simply a matter of preference these days as all the high end phones have extremely similar functions. Or put it another way I can't think of anything I want to do which can't be done on my iPhone. I also find Apple products are much "smoother" to use than Android which always seems to have the tiniest but irritating lag.

I have a Nexus 7 which is fantastic and for my needs the most flexible tablet available. I would have liked an iPad but for the cost it lacks things I definetely need. A great bit of kit for personal entertainment but not if you try to combine business functions. I also considered Samsung but concluded the business functions are limited and the Android software will never quite match the Nexus because of ownership issues. Having said that the Samsung is a lovely thing.

In my view Apple win on the phones but Android for tablets as the iPad, to me, lacks many business functions. Overall Apple win because the software only has to satisfy their own products and Android is trying to satisfy a multitude of different uses and products. For the moment any company is going to have to make a HUGE leap forward before I could get really excited about a new phone.

[Stuart]

What does the Nexus 7 offer you that the iPad doesn't, Paul?

[Paul]

What does the Nexus 7 offer you that the iPad doesn't, Paul?

The two major things for me are these. Nexus will run, using Office Suite Pro, both Microsoft Word and Excel. The functionality of both programmes appears limited on Nexus when compared to a laptop / desktop but more than covers my day to day needs. Someone will probably be along to correct me but I could not find anything which guaranteed I could EASILY, stressed, use these products on the iPad or Samsung. It's quite obvious Apple don't want MS products to work on iPad and I understand why.

Secondly the Nexus has brilliant voice input - speech to text. When I'm out and about in the business I use spreadsheets extensively, mainly for stock-taking - lots of numbers involved. I connect my iPhone via bluetooth to the Nexus to get a web connection and can then enter my spreadsheet data simply by speaking. The voice recognition only works with Google when there is a web connection, don't know why. The Google speech to text is vastly superior to Siri on the iPhone (though I believe it's the same basic software). it's also very easy to write notes etc. on the Nexus with either speech to text or the thing where you just trace the word across the keypad (don't know what that is called). The speech to text saves me around 2 hours when I'm stocktaking.

On the other hand we use Microsoft Outlook for calendars, contacts etc. in the office. The iPhone syncs with this fast and flawlessly, I don't get peoples problem with iTunes. I just open iTunes, plug in the phone and everything syncs in a couple of minutes - calendars, contacts, notes, music etc. What else could you want? The Nexus can be synced with Outlook but it isn't simple and because it's not a "straight out of the box" function I see it as a negative for the Nexus.

In every other aspect the Nexus fulfills all the functions,which I need, of an iPad for half the cost. It isn't quite as smooth to handle and use as the iPad and if it was purely for entertainment use I probably would buy the iPad.

I used to be rather anti-Android but I'm a big fan now. The major thing on my wish list - a game changer - will be the company which offers a device which can read me a book from my Kindle app. I know I can get talking books but the range is very, very limited. I want an app that will read whatever I chose to download to the Kindle app on Nexus.

[CapeTownRover]

Paul I think a lot of valid points, but one I will disagree on is lag on an iPhone. There is deffinately lag on iphones, and its not as smooth as what everybody says it is. Again, it comes down to how many apps are running at any given time. I know that on Android that not all apps close, even though you do shut them down. This running of apps in the background is one of the reasons you will find a slow lagging phone, as those apps are now using a lot of the phones processor etc. I think Apple does a better job at this, which is why it seems that the iphone runs a lot smoother

[M-K]

The major thing on my wish list - a game changer - will be the company which offers a device which can read me a book from my Kindle app. I know I can get talking books but the range is very, very limited. I want an app that will read whatever I chose to download to the Kindle app on Nexus.

Kindle always used to do that. Get a pre-Paperwhite version if you ever want to hear a novel read aloud in the soothing tones of Stephen Hawking.

They took the feature out of the hardware Kindles recently, so maybe they dropped it from the app too. Ghastly feature - speech synthesis always has been and always will be robotic.

[Tom]

Tom, have you thought about buying it outright from apple? You could then put an Ovivo SIM card in it and save a few quid. Total cost for the 2 years would then be about £565 as the SIM card is just a one off price of £15.

It's tempting but the up front cost is scary

[cmb211087]

You could always get the Nexus 4 for £200 (although the Nexus 5 will likely be released in November). Pretty much same specifications as the 5/5s and a hell of a lot cheaper. Obviously it would mean moving to Android though.

[old darwen blue]

Got a nexus 7. I don't use it, enough said.

[cmb211087]

The 4 is a phone, the 7 is a tablet....

[old darwen blue]

Correct but I was referring to post 13.

Anyway, got my new iphone 5s 64 gb slate grey on EE yesterday. I love it. Using a speed checker I clocked 39mb per second in Great Harwood, in Blackburn it is usually about 9mb.

Ios7 is definitely much better than on an upgrade iphone 4. This is the best phone I have ever owned, no question about it.

[adopted scouser]

Correct but I was referring to post 13.

Anyway, got my new iphone 5s 64 gb slate grey on EE yesterday. I love it. Using a speed checker I clocked 39mb per second in Great Harwood, in Blackburn it is usually about 9mb.

Ios7 is definitely much better than on an upgrade iphone 4. This is the best phone I have ever owned, no question about it.

Airdrop is briliant

[Stuart]

Airdrop is briliant

Except they've decided to exclude 4s from it - even though it also runs ios7.

[old darwen blue]

Haven't tried Airdrop yet but will now. Hmm.. What's Airdrop again?

[adopted scouser]

Haven't tried Airdrop yet but will now. Hmm.. What's Airdrop again?

It's a bit like bluetooth really, swipe up on the home screen to get your control panel, switch on airdrop.Get anyone else with you to switch their's on and you can instantly swap pictures etc