iPhone 5 Review

Noh....this is not a phone review.

As the title suggests, I shall stick only to the imaging side of the iThing. 

Without any doubt in my mind, one of the best 1080p FullHD videocam around. Playback quality on a 42 inch plasma screen belies the quarter inch opening at the back of the 7.6mm thick phone. One contributing factor is the cropped video frame that utilise the better (more central) part of the lens elements.

Distortion sample

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the absolute photo quality of this 8MP snapper. Plenty of samples with elongated/buldging head in the corners. Here's one of the worse example but it would not be fair to call it a bad camera. Overall sharpness is very good in normal daylight situation with faithful and punchy colours. Frame your subject at the center and you'll get excellent quality pictures. Low light performance is no match for a dedicated compact with larger sensor which is a common shortfall of a phone camera.

It doesn't seem to focus too close either which is ashame because it is most useful as a convenient document recorder where faithful shape reproduction isn't as critical. 

Oh did I mention the panorama feature? Lovin'it....

Panorama effectively replaces wide angle lens

I really look forward to the next incarnation from the fruity firm, iPhone 5S, that comes fitted with enlarged 1.5 micron pixel sensor (same 8MP but 14.8% larger area) and f2.2, 5-element lens. For comparison the largest is 4MP HTC One with f2 lens at 2.0 micron, Nokia N8 at 1.75 micron and the rest (i5, MX, HOX+, SZ) at 1.4 micron and 13MP GS4 and 41MP N1020 at 1.12 micron, while the (possibly) same 5-element f2.2 lens is also found on the BZ10 and BZ30. PS: See my Olympus E-M5 review for past experience with sensor sizes. In short, from 8MP to 16MP, sensor size impacts image quality more. 4MP is pushing it a bit: out to proof a point: yes, but frankly being a laughing stock (no pun intended).