The endless rumors about Apple’s next iPhone bore fruit this morning, with the company finally confirming the iPhone 5.
As expected, the iPhone 5 comes with a larger screen--it’s now 4-inches. It’s also 18% thinner, 20% lighter, and, defying belief, comes with 44% greater color saturation. Ryan is still blown away.
The extra space makes the device 16:9 when turned on its side, and allows for another row of Apps on the home screen. For existing Apps that haven’t (or won’t) be updated to the larger size, the App is centered on the screen, with black bars on each side.
The iPhone 5 sports LTE network technology, which debuted on the iPad earlier this year.
More importantly for games, the device has an A6 chip. Apple claims it's twice as fast as the A5, which is already pretty great. At today’s press conference, Apple claimed this would translate to “console” quality gameplay, whatever that metric means anymore.
Electronic Arts showed off Fire Monkey's Real Racing 3 on the iPhone to demonstrate what the new technology is capable of.
Besides an upgraded iPod Touch for those sporting another phone already, no other announcements--new iTunes, iOS 6 features, revised iPad Nano--had any real impact on games. That'll come if they move to the TV.
Apple said the phone would go on sale on September 21. Pre-orders start on Friday, September 14.
Tomorrow, it’s Nintendo’s turn in the spotlight.
(And the real question is: white or black?)