Difference Between Apple iPhone 4 and iPhone 5

Apple iPhone 4 vs iPhone 5 | Full Specs Compared | iPhone 5 vs iPhone 4 Speed, Performance, Design and Features 

Apple is a strong competitor for any smartphone company out there. They have single handedly swept the smartphone market by introducing the Apple iPhone which was simplistic, yet intuitive and prestigious. It has become almost symbolic as the beginning of the revolution of the smartphones. Back in the days, they had many improvements to be added to a smartphone. But looking at the recently released handsets, we are beginning to think that the manufacturers are at a saturation point where they have relatively less progression from the predecessor to successor. It’s true that they make the smartphones thinner and perhaps lighter, and increase their performance as well. However, when you look at the first generation of smartphones and the second, there’s a wow factor involved when we set our eyes on the second. The third generation didn’t wow us that much and the difference in between generation has grown thinner and thinner. Hence you can say we are desperately waiting for a breakthrough in the smartphone market that can wow us again. Is the new Apple iPhone 5 that smartphone? It’s hard to say right now because we don’t have the specific information about the handset. But what we can say is that it feels great and light in your hand and the new operating system seems to have rigged up the performance. It is said to be twice as faster compared to iPhone 4S. So we thought of giving it a spin with the Apple iPhone 4, which is technically the major predecessor where Apple iPhone 4S can be considered as an extension of iPhone 4.

Apple iPhone 5 Review 

Apple iPhone 5 that was announced on 12th September comes as the successor for prestigious Apple iPhone 4S. The phone was launched on the 21st of September to the stores, and already getting some pretty good impressions by those who have put their hands on the device.. Apple claims iPhone 5 to be the thinnest smartphone in the market scoring a thickness of 7.6mm which is really cool. It scores dimensions of 123.8 x 58.5mm and 112g of weight which makes it lighter than most of the smartphones out there in the world. Apple has kept the width at the same pace while making it taller in order to let the customers hang on to the familiar width when they hold the handset in their palms. It is made entirely from glass and Aluminum which is a great news for artistic consumers. No one would doubt the premium nature of this handset for Apple has tirelessly engineered even the smallest parts. The two tone back plate feels genuinely metallic and is pleasing to hold on to the handset. We particularly loved the Black model although Apple offers a White model, as well.

iPhone 5 uses an Apple A6 chipset along with Apple iOS 6 as the operating system. It will be powered by a 1GHz Dual Core processor that Apple has come up with for iPhone 5. This processor is said to have Apple’s own SoC using ARM v7 based instruction set. The cores are based on Cortex A7 architecture which was previously rumored to be of A15 architecture. It is to be noted that this is not the Vanilla Cortex A7, but rather an in-house modified version of Apple’s Cortex A7 probably fabricated by Samsung. Apple iPhone 5 being a LTE smartphone, we are bound to expect some deviation from the normal battery life. However, Apple has addressed that problem with the custom made Cortex A7 cores. As you can see, they haven’t increased the clock frequency at all, but instead, they have been successful in increasing the number of instructions executed per clock. Also, it was noticeable in the GeekBench benchmarks that the memory bandwidth has been significantly improved, as well. So all in all, now we have reason to believe that Tim Cook wasn’t exaggerating when he claimed that iPhone 5 is twice as faster as iPhone 4S. The internal storage would come in three variations of 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB with no option to expand storage using microSD card.

Apple iPhone 5 has 4 inch LED backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1136 x 640 pixels at a pixel density of 326ppi. It is said to have 44% better color saturation with full sRGB rendering enabled. The usual Corning gorilla glass coating is available making the display scratch resistant. Apple CEO Tim Cook claims that this is the most advanced display panel in the world. Apple also claimed that the GPU performance is as twice better compared to iPhone 4S. There may be several other possibilities for them to achieve this, but we have reason to believe that the GPU is PowerVR SGX 543MP3 with a slightly overclocked frequency compared to that of iPhone 4S. Apple has apparently moved the headphone port all the down to the bottom of the smartphone. If you have invested in iReady accessories, you may well have to buy a conversion unit because Apple has introduced a new port for this iPhone.

The handset comes with 4G LTE connectivity as well as CDMA connectivity in different versions. The implications of this are subtle. Once you commit to a network provider and a specific version of Apple iPhone 5, there’s no going back. You can’t buy an AT&T model and then transfer the iPhone 5 to Verizon or Sprint’s network without buying another iPhone 5. So you will have to think rather carefully on what you want before committing to a handset. Apple boasts of an ultrafast Wi-Fi connectivity as well offering Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n dual band Wi-Fi Plus cellular adapter. Unfortunately, Apple iPhone 5 doesn’t feature NFC connectivity nor does it support wireless charging. The camera is the regular culprit of 8MP with autofocus and LED flash that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. It also has a front camera to make video calls. It is worthwhile to note that Apple iPhone 5 only supports nano SIM card. The new operating system seems to provide better capabilities than the old one as usual. 

Apple iPhone 4 Review

Apple iPhone 4 was officially announced and released in June 2010. The device is the 4th generation of the famous iPhone lineage. The phone is available in Black and White.

The device remains 4.5” tall and carries a more sophisticated look than the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Apple iPhone 4 is 0.36” thick and weighs 137g. The screen on iPhone 4 is a 3.5” LED-backlit IPS TFT, capacitive touch screen with 640 x 960 pixels and nearly 330 PPI pixel density. Due to its high resolution and pixel density Apple markets the new display as “Retina Display”. If observed closely, one would notice that pixilation is nearly nonexistent on iPhone 4 in comparison to iPhone 3 and 3G s displays. At the time of the release, iPhone 4 was crowned as the best quality mobile display. The device also has a scratch-resistant oleo phobic surface for protection. In terms of sensors, iPhone 4 has an accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, three-axis gyro sensor and a proximity sensor for auto turn-off. The device also has a scratch-resistant glass back panel.

Apple iPhone 4 runs on a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor (Apple A4 Chipset) coupled with PowerVR SGX535 GPU. It is this configuration, which enables the powerful graphics on this device. The device has 512 MB worth memory and available with 16 GB and 32 GB variants of internal storage. A micro SD card slot is not available and there for expanding storage on iPhone 4 is not an option. In terms of connectivity, the GSM model supports UMTS/ HSUPA/ HSDPA, and the CDMA model supports CDMA EV-DO Rev.A, and both have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The device is complete with USB support.

iPhone 4 is complete with Audio and video players, and was the first mobile phone released with a video editor on a mobile. iPhone 4 enables quality audio recording with active noise cancellation with dedicated microphone. The device also has an inbuilt speaker as well as 3.5 mm audio jack. The device is also complete with a TV out.

iPhone 4 comes with a 5 mega pixel rear facing camera with autofocus, LED flash, Touch focus, and geo-tagging. The camera is also capable of recording video at 720p with LED video lighting. A VGA camera is also available as the front facing camera to allow video conferencing. Though, the number of mega pixels in the rear facing camera is not the highest in the market, photos from iPhone 4 looks decent enough. These cameras are tightly coupled with “FaceTime”, video calling application provided by Apple.

Apple did not include NFC capability to iPhone 4 by the time of release. However, in Japan NFC was enabled on iPhone 4 via a sticker and by including a small NFC enabled card under the back cover of iPhone 4. These methods are not official, and don’t have the support of Apple. iPhone 4 runs on iOS 4 and comes preloaded with Google maps, voice command, FaceTime, enhanced mail and etc. Applications for iPhone 4 can be downloaded from Apple App store.

Battery life is another department iPhone out performs its contemporaries. The device has a 300 hour standby time with up to a remarkable 14 hours talk time and up to 40 hours of music play.

Conclusion

I’ll start this conclusion by stating one thing. You need to realize that we are comparing two smartphones that are released two years apart. So we need to expect some significant changes in the handsets. For instance, Apple iPhone 5 has better processor, better display panel with a higher resolution, better connectivity options as well as better optics. When it comes to the operating system, Apple announced that iPhone 4 will also get the new iOS 6 update. This shows how good this handset is despite been more than 2 years old. There’s also an incentive when you buy Apple iPhone 4 because it is offered free with a two year contract while Apple iPhone 5 is offered at $199 with the same contract. We appreciate the inclusion of 4G LTE connectivity in Apple iPhone 5, but if you are not that hungry on data, Apple iPhone 4 would serve you just as better. It’s rather difficult for me to give a clear cut conclusion in this scenario although performance wise, Apple iPhone 5 is undoubtedly the winner. I’ll leave the purchasing decision for you on your preference as well as the price point you expect.

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