Category Archives: iPhone 5
New Mophie Juice Pack Plus gives your iPhone 5 extra oomph
Today, iPhone 5 users have another way to keep their phone charged up for those times when the battery is getting sucked dry. Mophie, which previously brought us the Juice Pack Helium and Juice Pack Air for iPhone 5, today announced the Juice Pack Plus (US$119.95).
The case comes in hues of black, white and PRODUCT(RED), and differs from its siblings in thickness, weight, and capacity. The battery in the Plus is a whopping 2100 mAh, while the Air has 1700 mAh of extra power and the Helium provides 1500 mAh. Weight for the Plus and Air is 2.68 oz., while the Helium weighs in at a svelte 2.44 oz. The Plus is 0.70″ thick, the Air is 0.63″ thick, and the Helium is just 0.59″ thick.
Study: iPhone retains value better than top Galaxy models
The next time your Samsung Galaxy-toting friends try to annoy you, here’s a piece of information you can throw back at them. According to a study published yesterday by investment bank Piper Jaffray, iPhones depreciate at less than half the rate of similar Android devices from Samsung.
Analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray referred to the new index as “a pulse on what consumers are willing to pay for unsubsidized phones in the US.” The index compares US eBay auction ending prices for the iPhone 5, iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II over a rolling 8 weeks to create a trend on resale prices.
T-Mobile raises iPhone down payment amount
The launch of the iPhone 5 on the T-Mobile USA network last month was greeted with a lot of fanfare and a new pricing structure — customers could pick up a 16 GB iPhone 5 with a $99.99 down payment and then make 24 payments of $20 to purchase the phone outright. TmoNews reports that the down payment on all iPhone 5 models has been raised by $50, which raises the cost of the least expensive unlocked iPhone 5 to $630.
That’s not all that much less than the price of an unlocked 16 GB iPhone 5 from Apple — $650. Of course, there’s no monthly payment option if you buy direct from Apple. Customers wanting to reduce the down payment on that T-Mo iPhone 5 should remember that the carrier does take trade-ins of current iPhones. T-Mobile is seeing the benefits of the iPhone already, having sold more than a half-million devices in the first month after launching the device.
Apple takes fifth spot in Chinese smartphone market
In the world’s largest smartphone market — China — Apple’s share rose in the first quarter of 2013 to make the company the fifth largest vendor. Numbers from research firm Canalys show that the release of the iPhone 5 and price cuts on older iPhone models drove growth of Apple’s sales.
Apple’s share of the huge smartphone market pie is important to its bottom line — while 27 million smartphones were shipped in the US during the first quarter, the number in China was a huge 82 million. That share is just 8 percent, well behind Samsung’s 20 percent share, but is made up of much more expensive phones.
iPhone 5, HTC One cameras compared by iMore
Here at TUAW, we’re strictly an Apple blog, but our friends over at iMore tend to take a more cross-platform look at things. Today, iMore’s Allyson Kazmucha published a lengthy and detailed side-by-side comparison of the 8 megapixel camera built into the iPhone 5 and the highly-touted 4 MP camera that is part of the HTC One Android phone. How did the iPhone 5′s camera compare?
Kazmucha took photos at the same place and time with both cameras, so you really get a feel for how each camera responds to certain lighting conditions. The iPhone uses an f/2.4 aperture on a 1/3.2-inch sensor with a pixel size of 1.4 micrometers, while the HTC One has a slightly faster f/2.0 aperture and a pixel size of 2 micrometers on the same sensor. As she points out, these “UltraPixels are larger and should allow for better light sensitivity, particularly in low light situations.”
