iPhone 5 unboxing

Today seemed like Al-Ghanim special for me as I had two invites from them, one for the Home Cinema setups [see other post] and also unboxing of the much awaited iPhone 5 which they have now begun selling in their showrooms. Now before I go further let me state this on record that I am an Android user, and I’ve never owned an iPhone before, so bear with me if you feel like I am a novice in iPhone matters.

Anyhow…so I went over at the Al-Ghanim Headoffice in Shuwaikh, and there I was given a boxed iPhone 5. The box contains 3 main components, the iPhone 5, lightning charger, and the new re-designed headphones. I own a Galaxy S2, and always marveled at it’s form factor, and then now I had the arch-rival in my hands. First impression was, wow, its a beautifully designed phone. Light, thin, and just about the perfect size for a phone. The iPhone had IOS 6 installed on it, and the performance in terms of usage is superb. Very responsive and fast. Kind like a phone that you would love to use. The screen is brilliant, great sound quality, and smooth touch interface.

Some of the features that I tested was the cameras [front and back], Siri, panoramas, and browsing. I loved the panorama feature which is totally different from the ones on Android phones. All you do is point at the start location and just keep on turning right. There are no clicks after each snap, its like recording a video, one complete sweep. The quality of cameras [f and b] is brilliant. Siri was responsive to 99% of what I spoke, even though I speak English with an accent. Although I felt that Siri did lack knowledge of common local information like ‘restaurants in kuwait’. I couldn’t test Maps, the one app that is a thorn in the side of Apple. Most of the other things are pretty much standard that almost all smart phones now have. Wireless networking was perfect, although I couldnt test voice calls as there was no sim card in the phone.

Overall impression, its a beautiful phone, well designed, snap performance, and ofcourse with the huge catalog of great apps, it is a complete smart phone. Now the only thing is the pricing. Currently in Kuwait, iPhone 5 is priced between KD 300-350 for the 16GB starter model. And given the current prices of Galaxy S3 at around KD 170, vendors will have to quickly re-price iPhone 5 if they want to capture the lost market.