We're about to get new phones, and I am fine with the 16GB 4s for $99... my wife, however wants the 5. She is by no means a power user. She does do lots of email, though. And she likes her calendar program. She will take photos, but probably not take video.
So what are all the differences? She can have the 5 if it makes sense, but I don't see why she needs it.
iPhone 5 has a 4 inch screen, so 1/2 inch larger, so more info gets displayed per page
It's noticeably lighter
I think it has worse build quality than the 4S
iPhone 5 has an aluminum back, iphone 4s has a glass back
iPhone 5 is twice as fast as the 4s, which is really nice. It's at least 4 times as fast as the iphone 4. Hugely and instantly noticeable.
battery life seems to be a bit worse on the iphone 5 vs the iphone 4s
iphone 5 is thinner
iphone 5 camera is better in low light situations
iphone 5 speaker is definitely 1-2 notches louder, and it doesn't distort. Loudest and best phone speaker I've ever heard
iphone 5 call quality is very good, best I've ever heard and instantly better than the iphone 4/4s
iphone 5 headphone jack is at the bottom, which is odd to me
iphone 5 front-facing camera is much improved
iphone 5 physical home button seems to be bette engineered so it won't fail like they can on the iphone 4
The iphone 5 is unquestionably better than the iphone 4 and 4s. It's not up for debate. Then again, almost any phone today is better than the one it replaced 1 yr ago, and certainly 2 years ago. It's really a question of how much better is it for you, and for your wallet? There was a certain core set of features that I wanted the iphone to have which it id not yet have. In the iphone 5 I got it.
-- I wanted it to be alot faster, check
--I wanted it to have a 4 inch screen, which is the ideal portability/comfortable viewing size to me, check
--I wanted it to be thinner, check
--I wanted better battery life (jury is still out)
That's it and that's all that I'll want for the foreseeable future. I could see myself using this phone for four years.
