I upgraded from an iPhone 4 to the 5. My phone came last Monday, so I've had almost a week to put it through its paces. To quickly summarize, I absolutely love this phone!
Here are my initial thoughts. The phone is amazingly fast. Coming from the 4 model, this this is a HUGE upgrade in terms of performance. It reminds me from my upgrade from the 3 (not 3s) to the 4. There is zero delay in doing anything in the iPhone 5. Menus, navigation, web surfing, everything is just so amazingly responsive. A huge difference. Don't get me wrong, my 4 was working fine, but this is just a huge upgrade.
The LTE is just as fast as my home network. 4G is amazing. I have to admit, all of my friends with their andriod phones were raving about it a year ago, but I kinda poo pooed it. Well, they were right. And with the speed of the processor in this phone, web pages load almost instantaneously. I don't even worry about connecting to my home wireless any more (I am grandfathered under AT&T's unlimited data plan). It's just that fast. Coverage is really good in the Seattle area too.
The larger screen is very nice to have. Email and web browsing are much improved with the real-estate.
So far I've had no issues with the iOS maps app. And turn by turn instructions from Siri is so nice to have now. Plus, because I didn't have Siri with the 4, this is my first time using it. It's great to be able to do hands free operation while driving. Making calls, text messaging, directions, etc. Very cool.
Battery life has been good. I would say about on par with my 4. The battery meter seems to drain quicker than on the 4, but when I get down to 20% remaining, that lasts a lot longer than it should, so I think it might be a way the phone reads the remaining charge in the battery. I did a test where i put the phone through its paces during an entire day. I went from 100% to 20% in about 7 hours, but that last 20% lasted another 3 (this is constant streaming over data network plus phone calls). So I estimate about 10 hours of hard usage on one charge.
As you can tell, I'm very happy with the phone. I do have a Zagg invisible shield on the way for the front and back. I've been using those since my iPhone 3, and they do a great job without adding bulk to the phone. So right now I'm babying the heck out of my phone until I have some protection on it. So far so good. I would say the upgrade will make you very happy and would highly recommend it if you love the iPhone experience.
