iPhone 5

I got the newest iPhone this weekend. Best Buy has a great buyback program and they took my old iPhone 4 back for $150, so we only ended up paying $50. Pretty sweet. (My phone was in excellent condition thanks to my Otter Box and we still had the box and all the cords and such, so that’s partially why I got such a good price).

So here’s my review.

Pros:
Speed. So much faster than my 4, especially the camera. Huge improvement there.
Siri. I know it’s a gimmick, and still technically in beta (I think), but I really hate to type, so anything that let’s me easily dictate instead of typing is a big plus. I’ve used Siri several times today already, mostly for setting timers and texting.
Camera. Not only super fast, but great picture quality. The thing I was most looking forward to is the ability to do panoramic photos. I haven’t been able to do any just yet, but hopefully by next weekend I’ll be a bit steadier on my feet and I can try it out.
Ease of switching phones. I backed up right before I left home that day, so all of my info was ready in the cloud to start using right away once we bought the new phone. There were some hangups, most notably with my iTunes music and podcasts. I ended up having to plug the phone in to finish transferring everything over. But overall it was super easy and I don’t think I cursed once.

Cons:
Siri. The network isn’t exactly zippy 100% of the time. I had to tell Siri who my husband was at least three times before it stuck, due to network timeouts.
Screen size. I know everyone was drooling over the larger screen, and I thought I would too. But it still feels awkward to me, especially when taking screenshots. Probably something I’ll get used to though.
Headphones. I take issue with the apple commercial featuring the headphones. It’s annoying and arrogant. (I know Jason is rolling his eyes right now). So I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the new design anyway. I have weird ears. Headphones never stay in. Ever. So the new headphones went to Jason. Which makes us both happy. And if anyone has any headphone recs, I’m all ears 😛
Podcast app. I know this is an OS thing, and not strictly in iPhone 5 thing, but let me just take a minute to jump on my soapbox and say, I HATE the podcast app. I have been a podcast junkie for years, and have spent a lot of time carefully curating smart playlists to maximize my podcast enjoyment. And the stupid Podcast app took all of that functionality away. They broke something that was just fine. I tried to work with it, I really did. But it pissed me off to the point that I deleted the app entirely. Now my podcasts come through the regular iTunes app again. It’s a little buggy now and then, but much better than the stupid stupid stupid Podcast app.

To be honest, I didn’t want to upgrade at all. I was still mostly happy with my old phone. But Jason found the buyback offer and it was hard to pass up. I’m loving the speed and the camera the most right now. All in all, I’m really happy with the new phone.