iPhone 5 Features

1- FaceTime That Works Outside The Home

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, the iPhone 4 boasts the space-age FaceTime video-phone feature. And yes, FaceTime is futuristic and cool, but you know what else is cool? Having it work when you’re not sitting at home or at a Wi-Fi hot spot. As things stand right now, the video phone aspect is neat, but a computer running Skype or iChat will give you the same thing, without the jiggly crap involved with holding a video camera to your face. No, until you can videoconference a TV purchase with your main gal from inside Best Buy, the tech is just a gimmick -- no matter how cool you may feel FaceTiming your best bud from the hot spot at Starbucks to tell him about the Mila Kunis look-alike at the espresso bar.


2- Flash

We buy Steve Jobs’s opinion that HTML 5 is a better technology than Flash; in terms of tech cool, open platforms are to proprietary codecs what an Aston Martin is to a Chevy Cobalt. And moves by industry players like YouTube and Google to adopt HTML 5 make it clear that Flash is slowly wandering into the sunset. What’s less clear is just when buying a phone came to mean buying into Steve Jobs’s philosophy on where tech should be. And though the iPhone has been a major player in defining the future for Flash and HTML 5, the fact is that it’s a phone, not an arbiter of our online media experience. If someone wants Flash on his iPhone, let him have it. It’s called “giving the consumer what he wants.”


3- A Waterproof Design

It’s kind of understandable why your iPhone and other portable devices come with moisture detectors, but the first maker to come out with a fully waterproof mobile phone (or tablet PC, for that matter) is going to rule the world. In reality, there is absolutely no reason your next iPhone couldn’t be a fully sealed unit. Technologies like Bluetooth and inductive charging aren’t exactly exotic mechanics these days, nor is it unheard of to make a call in the rain or bath. Making that call without fearing for your expensive gadget’s warranty should be a given, especially considering the expensive hoops that some carriers make you jump through if you blow your phone halfway through your contract.

4- Wireless Power

The weakest link on pretty much any expensive gadget is the ports. How something so small can create so much anguish is amazing, but the simple fact is that the dock connector and headphone jack attract dust and moisture like a short skirt attracts catcalls. Switching to an all- Bluetooth model for headphones and data transfer is a no-brainer, but what you may not know is that it’s just as easy to lose the power plug. Inductive charging uses an electromagnetic field to charge your device off a kind of power “plate.” It’s the tech used for your electric shaver or toothbrush, and recent improvements have made it a viable, affordable option for higher-energy devices like smartphones and tablet PCs. The good news: The Wireless Power Consortium launched two devices at CES 2010, so the industry is finally getting it. The bad news: Apple isn’t part of the Wireless Power Consortium.


5- A More Hand-friendly Design

The iPhone 4’s tempered glass- and-metal enclosure give it an allure unmatched by pretty much any other smartphone. And the screen is so pretty that this phone could lick itself in an unmentionable place and look classy doing it. But the iPhone 3 just sat better in the hand. The older model’s curved back made it much more comfortable to hold, and there was no antenna brouhaha. For a company that is known for getting the design so right in terms of both form and function, this is practically insulting.

To fix this, the iPhone 5 will have to be at least as pretty as the 4, but have the hand-friendliness of the 3GS. Just how the iPhone team will pull this off is anybody’s guess, but Apple has a long and storied history of topping untoppable designs, so it’s not unreasonable to expect miracles.

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