iPhone 5

There seem to be two takes on the iPhone 5. One from the people who 'get' Apple (Gruber, Siegler et al) is that it's the best iPhone yet and we should all upgrade as soon as we can.  The other is that it's boring and disappointing and the most valuable company in the history of the world has seriously lost its mojo.

The truth is that it's a significant evolutionary release that I'd buy now if the cost meant nothing to me.  I've owned four phones in 15 years. I bought the first one because my wife was pregnant. I bought the second one because I was curious about bluetooth, it was second hand and it was similar to price of a replacement battery for the first phone.  I bought the third one because the second had been stolen and I was between jobs, so needed to be available to take calls from agents.

I bought the iPhone 4 because my iPod Touch (bought when my original 5GB iPod developed a fault after 7 years)  had taught me that a phone keypad was the wrong way to type on a handheld device, and, well, because I wanted one.

This hopefully establishes that I don't have a history of buying/replacing gadgets on a whim.  That hasn't changed with the iPhone 5.

As an iPhone 4 user/owner, it used to puzzle me that I'd still see people apparently happy with their inferior older model iPhones.  This no longer puzzles me at all.  I now understand that they didn't feel the need to upgrade because their 'old' phones simply didn't feel in any way broken to them.  That's exactly how I feel about the 4.  It's still an awesome device. It's not in anyway broken.

I wonder what the 5S/6 will be like next year?