Honestly, for whoever says they don't "NEED" the latest iPhone- did you really "NEED" the very first generation that came out? Ok, let's say you did since that's the phone that forever changed the face & function of a mobile device but then did you "need" the 3 or 3GS or the 4 & the 4S? Apple is a company with very intelligent engineering behind it. Not every product they release needs to reinvent the face of a cell phone or redesign the functionality behind a cell phone. As I hold both, the iPhone 4S & the iPhone 5, was there a "need" to make the switch to the latest iPhone? No. There is never any need to switch any phone while the phone is serving it's primary purpose- making & receiving calls..however, over time the average consumer decides this is not enough & demands further perfection & innovation in what is already pretty much the top of the line. So- Apple releases new iPhones to try to compensate for any faults the prior version of the iPhone may have. For example, the iPhone 4 had an antennae problem where people complained about dropped calls. So Apple released an iPhone 4S, building the antennae into 4 separate corners so as to avoid the problem of a person's hand covering the single antennae & causing a change in the pickup of radio frequency, thereby, dropping a call. They added Siri as a PERK but the primary reason a new phone was released was to fix old issues with the existing phone. Then, people noticed that with the iPhone 4S both, the front & back screens, were breaking when the phone was dropped, as both screens were built using glass. So now Apple has made the phone thinner, with the side panels & back built with aluminum so dropping the phone would not allow the iPhone 5 to fall on any parts of the glass & instead, on aluminum, which is much stronger. This is a HUGE improvement from iPhone 4S because this really means that Apple is working towards the possibility of not even needing a case on the phone anymore. Not to mention, how lightweight the phone is, how it's more convenient, much faster than the previous & honestly, looks much nicer. Apple is the inventor of the modern day cell phone. Does that mean it's obligated to change the face & function of every cell phone device they release? No, that's not realistic. It's easy to take each modification made & critique it until it seems like no work went into it but it's with each step in advancement that we are able to reach larger & more drastic milestones in developing anything. If they didn't release a new phone, people would complain. If they do release an iPhone, people still complain. The fact of the matter is we just set our expectations too high. It took years & years of planning & critiquing for Apple to release it's very first iPhone into the wireless market. That sort of evolution does not occur in 1-2 years. Has Apple made very large advancements since then? Yes. The fact that this is the only company this can be expected from speaks volumes on it's own. So do you "NEED" the iPhone 5 if you have the iPhone 4 or 4S? No. But is it much nicer & more convenient than the previous phones? Yes. It is their best phone yet & pretty damn worth it when compared to ANY other phone in the market today. Apple does not release products until it perfects them. Whatever they have in their phone is made to be fully functional, as opposed to other phones who boast large screens but voice memos that don't record over a distance of 2 feet or screens that shatter from a drop of 3 feet. So unless you personally have released a phone that is, in the least, AS functional as the iPhone 5, don't complain about them not releasing a completely new phone. They're people, not aliens. They have access to the same technology as we do & they use that & make sure whatever they release is as close to perfection as possible. They don't release a phone that promises as much as 99% of the phones on the market but deliver only about 50% of that satisfaction. Oh, & btw- yes, other companies release phones with A LOT of technological advances in hardware, however, what's the point when you have many features that function at only 50% of what they should be functioning at? (As mentioned before- little things like sound quality when recording a voice memo or having a screen the size of a brick but making it so fragile that eventually it is bound to break.) You perfect what you have instead of putting all ideas into a single product, releasing it, then having 85 of 100 people complaining because the phone delivers only half of what it promises to. You may not be convinced but there's a reason why millions & millions of other people are. & no, Apple did not secretly brainwash them. Consumer reviews speak for themselves. Go buy your brick & then go buy a case to cover it.