Apple's iPhone 5 makes its debut

MANILA, Philippines -  From the company that can seem to do no wrong comes what is arguably the most anticipated new product since the demise of its legendary founder, Steve Jobs, last year.

It’s nothing less than Apple’s iPhone 5, and as pretty much expected, it comes with a bigger screen and slimmer body that pundits swiftly labeled a no-brainer winner for the game-changing technology leviathan.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook described the unveiling as “the biggest thing to happen to iPhone since the iPhone.”

Dubbed by the Cupertino, California-based company as the “thinnest smartphone in the world,” the new iPhone 5 sports an upsized four-inch Retina display and a glass-and-aluminum body that is 18 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter than its predecessor, the iPhone 4S.

The new iPhone 5 measures a slender 7.6-mm thin (58.6-mm wide and 123.8-mm high) and weighs just 112 grams. It comes in two colors: black and slate, and white and silver.

Like the iPhone 4S, the newest Apple smartphone comes in 16-, 32- and 64GB models. It has an autofocus 8MP iSight camera with LED flash and HD video recording capability at 30 fps. The Retina display has a pixel resolution of 1136 x 640 at 326 ppi.

Apple has just started taking orders for the phone and will begin shipments on Sept. 21 in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, and the phone will be available in 100 countries by the end of the year.

Pricing for US customers will start at $199 with a two-year contract with the 32GB and 64GB models retailing for $299 and $399, respectively.

Web browsing is expected to be greatly improved, thanks to its 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network capability.

The new handset features Apple’s own new A6 processor, which is claimed to double the speed for loading Web graphics.

Battery life, a perennial bane of smartphones, is likewise claimed to have been extended to eight hours with mobile phone and browsing and 10 hours if Wi-Fi connections are used.

Apple also further improved Siri, its pioneering voice-activated assistant, while developing a state-of-the-art mapping program, and — seemingly impossible — managing to even more tightly integrate Facebook into the user interface.

Industry analysts expect the company to sell tens of millions of iPhone 5 handsets in the coming months with further estimates of between 48 million and 53 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012 and over a whopping quarter-billion in 2013.

Apple enjoys one the strongest customer loyalties among all tech companies but is still falling behind smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system, especially on a global scale.

Research firm IDC reported that Apple had 16.9 percent of the global smartphone market, with 68 percent of the market held by makers of Android phones led by Samsung.

One new iPhone 5 feature that might be met with mixed reactions is a new “Lightning” connector that replaces the previous phone’s 30-pin connector, the port that connects the device to computers, power outlets or docking stations.

Apple announced that it will sell adaptors for plugging new-generation iPhone and iPod touch devices into current accessories like speakers or other sound systems.

The launch on Sept. 12 was made even bigger with the simultaneous introduction of Apple’s new music players, the new iPod touch and the iPod nano. 

The company is also widely expected to launch a smaller version of its market-leading iPad tablet — dubbed iPad mini — later this year.