5 Reasons Why You Would Be Crazy To Buy the iPhone 5

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Apple announced its latest iPhone on Wednesday to little fanfare.  While it was an improvement over the iPhone 4S, the changes were incremental.  In fact, other smartphone makers are moving so quickly that many smartphones on the market today are much more attractive than the iPhone 5.  We take a look at the reasons why the iPhone 5 is likely not a good use of your hard-earned money.

1) No NFC

NFC (Near Field Communication) is a rapidly expanding technology with a wide variety of uses.  BlackBerry was the first smartphone maker to widely adopt the technology with the introduction of BlackBerry Tag.  It allows users to share links, contacts, pictures and more by simply tapping the phones together.  Recently, Samsung heavily promoted the NFC capability of its Galaxy SIII (called S-Beam) in TV commercials during the Summer Olympics.

NFC-enabled smartphones are now used as a credit card for purchases.  They are increasingly used as an access card for entry into buildings, since people are far less likely to leave their smartphone behind than their access card.  Smartphone makers, along with carriers and banks are quickly expanding the usage of NFC.  The fact that the iPhone 5 does not have NFC means that it is obsolete before it is even available for sale.

2) No DLNA

DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) is an open standard that allows you to wirelessly display your phone’s content (including videos) on your large-screen TV.  For example, with the touch of a button, you can wirelessly display a Youtube video onto your large-screen TV.  It is enabled on a variety of BlackBerry 7 devices and the Samsung Galaxy SIII, as well as the upcoming BlackBerry 10.  During the Summer Olympics, it is a new feature of the Galaxy SIII that Samsung heavily promoted.

3) No micro-USB or HDMI port

The iPhone 5 does not have a micro-USD or HDMI port, which are standard ways through which many electronic devices are connected.  This is not only a matter of inconvenience, but also forces the user to spent extra money to buy adapters.  For example, the iPhone 5 does not allow you to conveniently connect the phone to a computer or TV, in order to upload or display files.  Not having a HDMI port means you cannot easily connect the phone to a TV to display HD videos.

In addition, Apple reducing the size of the connector from the 30-pin to the new lightning connector means that a $29 adapter will be needed to connect the phone to any accessory that you previously purchased.

4) 4″ Screen Size Is Too Small

At a time when the Samsung Galaxy S III has a 4.8″ screen and the Note II has a 5.5″ screen, the iPhone 5′s display pales in comparison.  Even BlackBerry, the company that has been slow to adopt large touch-screens, is launching its first BlackBerry 10 superphone with a 4.2″ screen.  Apple has simply fallen behind the competition in this area.

5) Outdated UI

There is no doubt that iOS was a leap forward compared to other smartphone operating systems when the iPhone first launched in 2007.  However, 5 years later, years of minor changes have resulted in iOS being outdated compared to other OSs.  iOS still uses an outdated physical home button, when other OSs have moved on to virtual buttons.  In addition, iOS only displays rows of boring icons, while Android displays interactive widgets that are resizable and live.

iOS is based an “open-and-close” user experience, in which the user has to exit one app (by clicking the outdated physical button) in order to open another app.  Meanwhile, BlackBerry 10 is completely changing this paradigm by offering the innovative “flow UI”.  Multiple apps are running at the same time, and the user can glance at content in one app while using another app.  You can also “peek” at your home screen to see notifications while consuming content in an app (e.g. watching a movie).

Conclusion

The iPhone 5 is missing too many cutting-edge technologies, including NFC and DLNA.  This makes the device obsolete before it is even available for sale.  The iPhone 5 having a screen that is only 4″ and offering a 5-year-old OS results in a user experience that is outdated compared to Android and BlackBerry 10.  It is clear to us that other smartphones are a better choice than the iPhone 5.

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  • ben

    How stupid is this article? These are the smallest things i would consider, aint nobody got time to hook an hdmi cable to an android phone, i could just buy an app and smart tv, also whens the last time i used nfc with my friends, oh yeeah never, its useless and thats why blackberry is dying and android phones have nothing but gimmicks that give their fanboys an excuse to be proud of themselves

  • Pingback: Seven reasons why Apple is kind of losing its cool factor | The Gadget Masters

  • http://twitter.com/WorldGeoTwittah George Simmons

    DLNA? You fucking kidding? There’s AirPlay. Been there since 2010. It allows you to play a YouTube video or an HD video. There’s also an Hdmi adapter for the one time you’ll ever want to plug a cell phone into your HDTV. Nobody uses Hdmi ports in their phones anymore, did you notice how android phones stopped having Hdmi ports like they used to?

  • Playbook007

    Apple loves that type of consumer….

  • Sanjay

    is this article funded by Samsung ?

    • Michael Li

      Nope, the author is a BlackBerry user.

      • Vodapon

        ahhh .. thats explains the bias towards android and iOs … i thought gadget master suppoused to be a fair tech site ? this is not crackberry, verge, or playstationblog right ???

  • Stephen

    Reason #6: Crappy Maps app.
    #7: Scuff marks on aluminum.
    #8: Camera that puts purple haze onto pictures.

    • Michael Li

      Good point.

      • phinn

        #9 No simultaneous voice & data on Verizon Wireless, all Android phones can do this.

        • Michael Li

          Thanks! I didn’t know that.

  • Balli

    I’ve heard a rhumer that the new 5s will have a those features; when they launch it next year in Novdmber. But the screen will be the same size!

    • Stephen

      By then the iPhone will be behind on other features.

      • John

        Ya Samsung and HTC are moving very fast. The Nexus 10 by Samsung has dual-core Cortex-A15 CPU. That’s a generation ahead of the A9 in Apple’s 4th Gen iPad.

        • hendra

          wow thats amazing, a generation behind and still faster huh.

          • http://twitter.com/WorldGeoTwittah George Simmons

            Lol, it’s not even a generation behind either, it’s custom which means that apple doesn’t have to wait for arm to make a one size fits all new architecture. They get to customize it themselves and improve the performance at their own pace (apple is an extremely fast paced company) which means that they will be more like a generation ahead. A6 in 2012 matched A15 performance, but A15′s didn’t come until 2013. Now in 2013, the A7 will exceed A15 performance, only to be matched in the final months of 2013 when arm coretex A21 comes

        • http://twitter.com/WorldGeoTwittah George Simmons

          It’s not an A9, dumbass. It’s a custom arm architecture licensed by apple, and it provides performance up to the early A15 chips. The 4th gen iPad is the fastest performing tablet available right now. The nexus 10 compares pretty well on the CPU, but that’s only because it’s running at 1.7 ghz, while the iPad 4 is running at 1.4 ghz. The gpu is also about 10x better than anything on the market in the A6X, this has been proven. The next batch of quad core arm A15′s are coming out soon, and will be better than the A6X, but apple is launching a 5th gen iPad in 2 months, and a new iPhone in June or July, and will likely have a quad core A7 processor that outperforms the A6 by a lot (and it’s already an extremely fast processor).

          • Playbook007

            Nice to see you can keep up with the purchases required to support Apple. Me, I will keep kicking along with my BB phone and Playbook, which has great hardware, multiple software upgrades that have made it so much better, then the ultimate…..BB10 upgrade for free. Thanks RIM

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=779045532 Michael Li

      Apple is playing catch-up in mobile. That is the result of trying to build everything themselves, instead of partnering with others.

  • Rob

    Doesn’t matter. The hordes of Apple sheep will still wait on line to buy one.

    • David

      So many sheep – it looks like there is more than one New Zealand in the world.

      • Stephen

        These annual line-ups are getting old

  • David

    But iPhone 5 has rounded corners…

  • Matthew

    Don’t let Apple see this or they’ll send their lawyers your way!!

    • http://twitter.com/gadgetmasters Gadget Masters

      A cease-and-desist letter from apple would only make this article more popular.

  • Whatever

    Sorry but, A larger screen is the opposite of good. Yeah like we want a ten inch calculator ripping open our pockets…

    • TheGadgetMasters

      We didn’t exactly mean 10-inch when we said bigger.. 4.3-4.6 inch would give you higher resolution and more screen..

  • http://twitter.com/gyubok Gyubok Baik

    I strongly agree with #5. BlackBerry had the same problem and had to take drastic measures to shift and it seems like Apple is following the same suit.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=779045532 Michael Li

      Agreed. Apple is going to have a rude awakening very soon, when they see how far behind Android and BlackBerry 10 they are.

  • Stephen

    Reason #1 is the most important for me. I was expecting iphone5 to have NFC.

    • John

      I wonder when Apple will implement NFC.