Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
detailNews.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +133
System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) +14
System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) +35
System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +99
System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +50
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +627
Version Information:?Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3634; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3634
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.?? Before an unruly Tennessee party ended with a student hospitalized for a dangerously high blood alcohol level, most people had probably never heard of alcohol enemas.
Thanks to the drunken exploits of a fraternity at the University of Tennessee, the bizarre way of getting drunk is giving parents, administrators and health care workers a new fear.
When Alexander "Xander" Broughton, 20, was delivered to the hospital after midnight on Sept. 22, his blood alcohol level was measured at 0.448 percent ? nearly six times the intoxication that defines drunken driving in the state. Injuries to his rectum led hospital officials to fear he had been sodomized.
Police documents show that when an officer interviewed a fellow fraternity member about what happened, the student said the injuries had been caused by an alcohol enema.
"It is believed that members of the fraternity were utilizing rubber tubing inserted into their rectums as a conduit for alcohol," according to a police report.
While Broughton told police he remembered participating in a drinking game with fellow members of the Pi Kappa Alpha chapter, he denied having an alcohol enema. Police concluded otherwise from evidence they found at the frat house, including boxes of Franzia Sunset Blush wine.
"He also had no recollection of losing control of his bowels and defecating on himself," according to a university police report that includes photos of the mess left behind in the fraternity house after the party.
Broughton did not respond to a cellphone message seeking comment on Friday.
The university responded with swift investigation and a decision Friday to shutter the fraternity until at least 2015. The national Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity organization also accepted the withdrawal of the campus charter.
Alcohol enemas have been the punch lines of YouTube videos, a stunt in a "Jackass" movie and a song by the punk band NOFX called "Party Enema." But Corey Slovis, chairman of department of emergency medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said actually going through with the deed can have severe consequences.
"It's something that offers no advantages, while at the same time risking someone's life," he said.
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The procedure bypasses the stomach, accelerating the absorption rate, Slovis said. Pouring the alcohol through a funnel can increase the amount of alcohol consumed because it's hard to gauge how much is going in.
"When you're dumping it into your rectum, often via a funnel, one or two ounces seems like such a minuscule amount," he said. Ingesting more can create unconsciousness quite quickly, he explained.
The effects have been fatal in at least one case. An autopsy performed after the death of a 58-year-old Texas man in 2004 showed he had been given an enema with enough sherry to have a blood alcohol level of 0.47 percent. Negligent homicide charges were later dropped against his wife, who said she gave him the enema.
Students walking across campus this week generally responded with sighs and eye rolls when asked about the allegations.
"It's like a big joke," said Erica Davis, a freshman from Hendersonville. "Because who does that?"
Gordon Ray, a senior from Morristown, said the details of the case caught him off guard, but not the fact that fraternity members would be overdoing it with alcohol.
"It is definitely over the top," said Ray. "But it doesn't surprise me, I don't guess."
The harm the news has done to the university's national reputation was on the mind of several students.
"If someone wants to be stupid, then they should do it where it won't affect anyone else," said Marlon Alessandra, freshman from Independence, Va.
James E. Lange, who coordinates alcohol and drug abuse prevention strategies at San Diego State University, said alcohol enemas aren't a common occurrence on campuses, though normal consumption still contributes to hundreds of student deaths annually. And many of those can be attributed to reckless attitudes about the consequences of heavy drinking, he said.
"It's not unusual to hear that students are drinking to get drunk," he said.
Lange said he hopes students don't draw the wrong lessons from the University of Tennessee incident.
"Students and people in general are pretty good at denying that they are at risk for whatever happened to someone else," he said. "So they can look at something like this and say 'I'm OK because I would never do that.'
"However, they may be drinking heavily, or doing things like mixing alcohol with prescription meds that is putting them at serious risk," he said.
To Tennessee freshman Cody Privett of Sevierville, there's nothing appealing about the incident on his campus.
"It's stupid, it's an unfortunate situation," said Privett, of Sevierville. "I mean there's partying, and then there's other things."
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Professional SEO services, which is a reference to seo, is without doubt one of the leading advertising models applied by internet websites around the world. It offers benefits such as global scope, flexibility, cost-efficiency and target marketing, among others, with the promise of long-term ranking and high returns for investment. To date, search engine optimization has mostly concentrated on getting more for less effort. Nevertheless in 2012, there are modifications to trends people have observed from recent years, which would be everyone?s best interest to know:
1. Good quality will supersede the rest. In terms of professional SEO services, marketing a site online, you?ll have to rely more about the value you put in the market to attract people, as opposed to just the number of external sources that display your link on their page. Online readers today will not be as naive as those five to ten years in the past. Using the Google Panda update last 2011, it is very clear that even search engines are not likely to be tolerant to poor, low-quality websites that don?t contribute anything insightful to the circulation. You can expect to be sanctioned or even banned, if you endorse plagiarism in your website or advertising and marketing campaigns. So, if you are planning to use articles to promote yourself, always make a good amount of research and supply in-depth report and analysis on the subject before you propagate online.
2. Social connection and integrated strategies will be emphasized. In 2012, online community will continue to be a big hit. Communities will get larger and more open-minded. But, there will be integration of other professional SEO services marketing procedures in the undertaking, such as content or online video marketing and image optimization. It?s not enough that companies just make profiles to send out out tweets or posts that make use of keywords relevant to their site. They have to, again, contribute something valuable to the circulation. They could freely branch out to other credible sources over and over again. A nod towards others may send back a nod towards you. This new practice can certainly make 2012 social marketing distinctive from previous protocols.
3. Think mobile. There are a variety of cellular phones now that provide access to the internet and personalized functions which allow them to simplify the good results of their objectives. You will have a lot of applications and widgets for 2012 as a opportinity for professional SEO services marketing. Web design on page SEO will give focus to making websites responsive to the type of user panel it is shown on. Obviously, websites that can deal with the changing landscape of search online and technology may be more trusted by consumers. Sticking to traditional roots is going to be a negative aspect this year because of how fast the online environment evolves.
4. Last but not least, ranking will be replaced by real time. In 2012, it won?t matter if you have a page ranking of 6-10. Customers are no longer interested in hierarchy. Instead of ?the best?, they are more attuned to who is ?current?, therefore, search ranking will become more personalized rather then objective. Knowing this, it is sensible to visualize that keywords may eventually lose their significance in the professional SEO services process, but this threat is something that will simply be established in time.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) ? What first appeared to be an isolated problem in one Florida county has now spread statewide, with election officials in nine counties informing prosecutors or state election officials about questionable voter registration forms filled out on behalf of the Republican Party of Florida.
State Republican officials already have fired the vendor it had hired to register voters, and took the additional step of filing an election fraud complaint against the company, Strategic Allied Consulting, with state officials. That complaint was handed over Friday to state law-enforcement authorities.
A spokesman for Florida's GOP said the matter was being treated seriously.
"We are doing what we can to find out how broad the scope is," said Brian Burgess, the spokesman.
Florida is the battleground state where past election problems led to the chaotic recount that followed the 2000 presidential election.
The Florida Democratic Party called on the state to "revoke" the ability of state Republicans to continue to register voters while the investigation continues. Oct. 9 is the deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 6 presidential election.
"It is clear that the Republican Party of Florida does not have the institutional controls in place to be trusted as a third-party, voter registration organization," said Scott Arceneaux, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party.
The Republican Party of Florida has paid Strategic Allied Consulting more than $1.3 million, and the Republican National Committee used the group for work in Nevada, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia.
The company said earlier this week that it was cooperating with elections officials in Florida. It initially said the suspect forms were turned in by one person, who has been fired.
"Strategic has a zero-tolerance policy for breaking the law," Fred Petti, a company attorney, said Thursday.
But late Friday the company put out a lengthy statement on its website and said that it was aware of questionable forms in other counties and that it confirmed in each of those counties that the problem was with "one individual." Strategic said it had more than 2,000 people working in the state of Florida.
Strategic insisted that it has "rigorous quality control measures" and it blamed the Republican Party of Florida for the decision by Republican National Committee to dump the company on Thursday.
"When the Republican Party of Florida chose to make likely libelous comments about our effort and stated that the Republican National Committee suggested us as the vendor, the RNC was put in the unenviable position of ending a long-term relationship for the sake of staying focused on the election," the company stated.
In Florida, it is a third-degree felony to "willfully submit" any false voter registration information, a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.
In recent years, Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature ? citing suspicious voter registration forms turned in by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN ? has cracked down on groups holding voter registration drives.
The League of Women Voters filed a federal lawsuit against some of the restrictions and Florida agreed earlier this month to drop a new requirement to turn in registration applications within 48 hours after they are signed. The state has reinstated a 10-day deadline.
The questionable forms tied to the Republican Party have showed up in South Florida, including Miami-Dade, as well as counties in southwest and northeast Florida as well as the Florida Panhandle.
Election officials in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties on Thursday handed over more than 100 suspect forms to local prosecutors. They did so days after officials in Palm Beach County also alerted prosecutors.
Ann Bodenstein, the elections supervisor for Santa Rosa County, said her staff started raising questions after an employee saw a form that changed the home address of a neighbor.
Paul Lux, election supervisor for Okaloosa County, said questionable forms in the Florida Panhandle appear to have all come from Strategic's effort based at the local Republican Party headquarters. He said his office has turned up dozens of suspect forms.
Lux said there have been forms that listed dead people and were either incomplete or illegible. He met with local prosecutors on Friday, but added that his staff was still going through hundreds of forms dropped off by Strategic employees.
Lux, who is a Republican, said he warned local party officials earlier this month when he first learned the company was paying people to register voters.
"I told them 'This is not going to end well,'" Lux said.
But Lux added that he did not blame the Republican Party of Florida.
"I can't place the blame on RPOF if they hired a firm and that firm wasn't following the rules they were given to follow," Lux said.
The state party filed the complaint against Strategic Allied Consulting with state election officials, who late Friday handed the case over to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
An FDLE spokeswoman said the agency would not automatically open a criminal investigation, but would review to see if there were "possible criminal acts."
___
Follow Gary Fineout on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fineout
Square better get a move on launching its first non-U.S. mobile payment service because the market for point-of-sale mobile payments continues to hot up. We've been following the fortunes of Square-like competitors such as iZettle, mPowa and PayPal's Here for a while. Now meet the latest addition to the space: Emu -- a flat-fee card payment acceptance startup that's launched its service in the U.K. today, with registrations open to the rest of Europe.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Former New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who led the newspaper to new levels of influence and profit while standing up for press freedom during some of the most significant moments in 20th-century journalism, died Saturday. He was 86.
Sulzberger, who went by the nickname "Punch" and served with the Marine Corps before joining the Times staff, first as a reporter, and then following his father and grandfather as publisher, died at his home in Southampton, N.Y., after a long illness, his family announced.
During his three-decade tenure, the newspaper won 31 Pulitzer prizes, published the Pentagon Papers and won a libel case victory in New York Times vs. Sullivan that established important First Amendment protections for the press.
"Punch, the old Marine captain who never backed down from a fight, was an absolutely fierce defender of the freedom of the press," his son, and current Times publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., said in a statement. He said his father's refusal to back down in the paper's free-speech battles "helped to expand access to critical information and to prevent government censorship and intimidation."
In an era of declining newspaper readership, the Times' weekday circulation climbed from 714,000 when Sulzberger became publisher in 1963 to 1.1 million upon his retirement as publisher in 1992. Over the same period, the annual revenues of the Times' corporate parent rose from $100 million to $1.7 billion.
"Above all, he took the quality of the product up to an entirely new level," the late Katharine Graham, chairwoman of The Washington Post Co., said at the time Sulzberger relinquished the publisher's title.
Sulzberger was the only grandson of Adolph S. Ochs (pronounced ox), the son of Bavarian immigrants who took over the Times in 1896 and built it into the nation's most influential newspaper.
The family retains control to this day, holding a special class of shares that give them more powerful voting rights than other stockholders.
Power was thrust on Sulzberger at the age of 37 after the sudden death of his brother-in-law in 1963. He had been in the Times executive suite for eight years in a role he later described as "vice president in charge of nothing."
But Sulzberger directed the Times' evolution from an encyclopedic paper of record to a more reader-friendly product that reached into the suburbs and across the nation.
During his tenure, the Times started a national edition, bought its first color presses, and introduced ? to the chagrin of some hard-news purists ? popular and lucrative new sections covering topics such as food and entertainment.
"If you weren't around then, you forget the unbelievable outrage that greeted those sections. But in retrospect it was the right decision both editorially and economically," said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Sulzberger also improved the paper's bottom line, pulling it and its parent company out of a tailspin in the mid-1970s and lifting both to unprecedented profitability a decade later.
In 1992, Sulzberger relinquished the publisher's job to his 40-year-old son, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., but remained chairman of The New York Times Co. Sulzberger retired as chairman and chief executive of the company in 1997. His son then was named chairman. Sulzberger stayed on the Times Co. board of directors until 2002.
Reacting to news of Sulzberger's death Saturday, former Times executive editor Joseph Lelyveld said that his business success was matched by integrity in the newsroom.
"As an editor, you knew that if you went to the publisher and sought his support on an issue that you deemed to be of high importance, you could pretty much count on getting it. He knew how to back his people," Lelyveld said. "The last years have been extremely difficult with his health problems. He bore them with great courage. I admired him hugely."
President Barack Obama said Sulzberger was "a firm believer in the importance of a free and independent press ? one that isn't afraid to seek the truth, hold those in power accountable, and tell the stories that need to be told."
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he "changed the course of American history with his journalistic decisions."
Significant free-press and free-speech precedents were established during Sulzberger's years as publisher, most notably the Times vs. Sullivan case. It resulted in a landmark 1964 Supreme Court ruling that shielded the press from libel lawsuits by public officials unless they could prove actual malice.
In 1971 the Times led the First Amendment fight to keep the government from suppressing the Pentagon Papers, a series of classified reports on the Vietnam War. Asked by a reporter who at the Times made the decision to publish the papers, Sulzberger gestured toward his chest and silently mouthed, "me."
Sulzberger read the more than 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers before deciding to publish them. After Sulzberger read the papers, he was asked what he thought. "Oh, I would think about 20 years to life," he responded.
But in a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually sided with the Times and The Washington Post, which had begun publishing the papers a few days after the Times.
"Punch Sulzberger was a giant in the industry, a leader who fought to preserve the vital role of a free press in society and championed journalism executed at the highest level," said Associated Press President and CEO Gary Pruitt. "The Associated Press benefited from his wisdom, both during his years on the board of directors and his thoughtful engagement in the years that followed."
Gay Talese, who worked at the Times as a reporter when Sulzberger took over and chronicled the paper's history in his book "The Kingdom and the Power," called him "a brilliant publisher. He far exceeded the achievements of his father in both making the paper better and more profitable at a time when papers are not as good as they used to be."
In their book "The Trust," a history of the Ochs-Sulzberger family and its stewardship of the paper, Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones cited Sulzberger's "common sense and unerring instincts."
In an interview in 1990 with New York magazine, Sulzberger was typically candid about the paper's readership.
"We're not New York's hometown newspaper," he said. "We're read on Park Avenue, but we don't do well in Chinatown or the east Bronx. We have to approach journalism differently than, say, the Sarasota Herald Tribune, where you try to blanket the community."
New York City's mayor from 1978 to 1989, Ed Koch, said Sulzberger also had great humility, despite his extraordinary influence.
"With enormous power and authority he was a humble a person as you could ever meet," Koch said Saturday. "People with enormous power often dominate a room. He did not. And yet the power and authority was there."
In the mid-1980s Sulzberger authorized the building of a $450 million color printing and distribution plant across the Hudson River in Edison, N.J., part of a plan to get all printing out of cramped facilities in the Times building in Manhattan.
Sulzberger was born in New York City on Feb. 5, 1926, the only son of Arthur Hays Sulzberger and his wife, Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, Adolph's only child. One of his three sisters was named Judy, and from early on he was known as "Punch," from the puppet characters Punch and Judy.
Sulzberger's grandfather led the paper until his death in 1935, when he was followed by Sulzberger's father, who remained at the helm until he retired in 1961.
Meanwhile, Arthur served in the Marines during World War II and, briefly, in Korea. He later observed, in a typically self-deprecating remark, that "My family didn't worry about me for a minute. They knew that if I got shot in the head it wouldn't do any harm."
Except for a year at The Milwaukee Journal, 1953-54, the younger Sulzberger spent his entire career at the family paper. He joined after graduating from Columbia College in 1951. He worked in European bureaus for a time and was back in New York by 1955, but found he had little to do.
Sulzberger had not been expected to assume power at the paper for years. His father passed control to Orvil E. Dryfoos, his oldest daughter's husband, in 1961. But two years later Dryfoos died suddenly of heart disease at 50. Punch Sulzberger's parents named him publisher, the fourth family member to hold the title.
"We had all hoped that Punch would have many years more training before having to take over," said his mother, Iphigene. Sulzberger relied on senior editors and managers for advice, and quickly developed a reputation as a solid leader.
At various times, Sulzberger was a director or chairman of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, American Newspaper Publishers Association and American Press Institute. He was a director of The Associated Press from 1975 to 1984.
Sulzberger married Barbara Grant in 1948, and the couple had two children, Arthur Jr. and Karen. After a divorce in 1956, Sulzberger married Carol Fox. The couple had a daughter, Cynthia, and Sulzberger adopted Fox's daughter from a previous marriage, Cathy.
Carol Sulzberger died in 1995. The following year, Sulzberger married Allison Cowles, the widow of William H. Cowles 3rd, who was the president and publisher of The Spokesman-Review and Spokane Chronicle of Spokane, Wash. She died in 2010.
Chris Lark, on the left, believes that computers are the main reason behind the decline of Squash. Photo: Dylan Lauritsen
?by Dylan Lauritsen
In the early 90s, squash went from the after dark pastime of sporting Australia to the obscure sport society knows today and while no one can ever be sure about what caused the immense shift in popularity, Chris Lark, the current third seed in Western Australia and owner of the Belmont Squashworks attributes it to a culture shift and the rise of alternative sports. This culture shift, he believes, was the growing computer culture.
His views are backed by a large number of professional and industry figures as well as an overwhelming number of studies, the most troubling of which, came in 2009 and indicated that less than 25 per cent of children participated in more than two hours of organised sport a week.
This research came as no surprise to those who follow the sport as they had been watching participation rates slowly decline since the availability of computers became commonplace. What is perhaps more startling is the number of children who spend time watching television for more than 20 hours a week. The number has increased from close to 50 per cent in the mid to late 90s to 80 per cent after 2000.
It is apparent that one of the main problems that squash faced in its dark days was the lack of publicity. The sport was no longer televised, results were being shown less on the news and squash clubs themselves were forced to undertake the nearly impossible task of self-promotion, which, when combined with the downturn in profits, meant that any advertisement had to be minimal or increasingly local. When combined with soaring retail prices and a dramatic rise in rates, many squash courts had no option but to sell to developers, intent on using the land for housing or office space.
While it has never received that same level of publicity, the re-emergence of the sport in the 2000s, and the popularity it has with adults, has created a whole new wave of media coverage and interest. The ABC began intermittently covering results as recently as this year and the Exercise, Recreation and Sport survey released in 2011 by the Australian Sports Commission, highlights the revival of the sport amongst Australians with close to 270,000 people participating in organised and non-organised squash matches in 2011/2012. Whether the Olympics boosts this number is yet to be seen, however when asked about squash as an Olympic sport, Lark was quick to correct assumptions that it was a recognised sport, a fact he lamented. Mr Lark was adamant that it should indeed be an Olympic sport, a view that is shared by the majority of the international squash community and headed by the International Squash Council.
The International Squash Council launched bids for Squash in the 2012, 2016 and 2020 games and a grassroots campaign that has been titled, World Squash Day, has this year seen close to 100,000 participants worldwide.
The event, created by Alan Thatcher, is a tribute to a young squash player who died in the terrorist attacks on September 11 and hopes to draw the international media eye and raise the profile of the sport. Each year a theme that promotes the sport is chosen for the day and participating clubs are encouraged to embrace the push. There have been three Olympic bid themes, a ?women in squash? theme as well as 20/10, which asked clubs to recruit 20 new youth players and ten new senior players.
This year?s theme, as it is an Olympic year, was the 2020 games bid theme. The bid has many supporters including Nicol David, the Malaysian born Australian Open Squash Champion and current world number 1 seed. The Malaysian genius told Alan Thatcher she would swap all of her six world titles for Olympic gold. Squash enthusiasts anticipate public support for the bid will continue to grow as the sport continues attract more attention, though in recent years the development of technology and online experiences has led to a severe drop in the number of youths playing the sport and an increase in levels of obesity in children.
These apartments used to be a popular squash centre. Photo: Dylan Lauritsen
The Australian Institute for Health and Welfare released recommendations for healthy levels of activity in children, which suggest that more than two hours of non-educational screen time is detrimental to the health of young people. They found that in students between the ages of 13 and 17, 71 per cent exceeded the recommended two hours on weekdays and 83 per cent exceeded it on weekends.? The same research revealed that only four in ten young people did equal to or more daily exercise than was recommended.
While the research has little implication on the development of squash in youths, Mr Lark has taken that measure into his own hands. Setting up a junior competition on Fridays and travelling to schools with an inflatable squash court are two of the ways he is aiming to grow the sport in young people. Though these programs have only recently commenced, Mr Lark still believes that he has been a rise in the number of youths participating in the sport over the last ten years.
?We have been going out to school with our inflatable squash court and as a result there have been a lot more junior players in the past two years than there has been in the past ten.?
This is a positive result for the sport as it will continue to gain increased publicity as the young generation matures.
As squash continues to make its ?comeback? into mainstream public awareness, the sport will continue to grow. A major win for the sport would be acceptance into the 2020 Olympics and with dedicated and hardworking members like Chris Lark, the sport could not be in better hands. His efforts to introduce the sport to Western Australia?s youth will broaden and develop interest in the game of squash and positively impact on the future of this great game.
Belmont Squashworks is located at 144 Robinson Avenue?Belmont WA 6104
Phone:9227 6673
http://squashworks.com.au/
Alan Thatcheris on Twitter @HotBalls5th
The International Squash Council website is www.worldsquash.org
The World Squash Day website is www.worldsquashday.com
DENVER (AP) ? The suspect in a deadly movie theater attack was barred from the University of Colorado campus for threatening a professor, weeks before he opened fire at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie, prosecutors said in court documents released Friday.
That conflicts with the university's statements that Holmes was denied access to non-public parts of the campus because he had withdrawn from school.
The name of the person has been blacked out. University officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Just minutes before the shooting, Holmes tried unsuccessfully to call his university psychiatrist, defense attorneys have said.
Holmes also mailed a notebook to psychiatrist Lynne Fenton, a professor at the school, including violent descriptions of an attack, attorneys said. She never received the package addressed to her, and it wasn't discovered in a university mail room until after the shooting.
Defense attorneys don't want it to be used as evidence, saying it's protected by doctor-patient privilege. Fenton last saw Holmes professionally on June 11 before seeing him again in court on Aug. 30.
In the documents released Friday, prosecutors say the professor reported the threats, and Holmes was denied access to campus "as a result of these actions."
In other documents, defense attorneys say the prosecutors' allegations are false, based on university statements.
After weeks of secrecy surrounding the case, most of the documents filed in court were released to the public on Friday.
Holmes, 24, faces 152 charges in the July 20 shooting at an Aurora movie theater during a special midnight showing of the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises." The attack killed 12 people and injured 58 others.
The defense has a psychiatry expert on its defense team and plans to use him as an expert, giving further insight into a possible insanity defense by James Holmes, the documents showed.
Defense attorneys claim Holmes is mentally ill, raising the possibility that Holmes will plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
In court, prosecutors suggested Holmes was angry at the failure of a once promising academic career and stockpiled weapons, ammunition, tear gas grenades, and body armor as his research deteriorated and professors urged him to get into another profession. Chief Deputy District Attorney Karen Pearson said Holmes failed a key oral exam in June, was banned from campus and began to voluntarily withdraw from the school.
A small victory in the fight for digital privacy: California Governor Jerry Brown has announced his signing of bills to prevent employers and universities from demanding social network login. More »
The definitive guide to Apple's taller, thinner, faster, lighter, brighter iPhone 5
The iPhone 5 was, is, and remains inevitable. An iPhone, new to be certain, but still an iPhone. Some say this is a sign Apple has lost their drive for innovation. Others, a sign Apple has kept their sense of focus. Both are facets of a single truth -- that through craft something is revolutionized, refined, and one day, replaced. The question then becomes, where is the iPhone 5 along this continuum? Is it a boring, uninspired, end-of-line update that should have Apple desperately seeking to once again "think different", or is it iconically, deceptively, insanely great enough to delight customers, inspire developers, and once again drive the entire industry forward?
Previously on the iPhone...
A lot of the features found in the iPhone 5 can also be found in earlier generation iPhones. Rather than repeat any of it, here are our previous iPhone reviews:
Gone is the sandwich of chemically treated glass and stainless steel of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. And in their place the iPhone 5 offers an aluminum unibody, accented by glassed, that houses not only a new, all-digital Lightning connector, fast LTE 4G networking, a monstrous Apple A6 processor, but for the first time, a taller, in-cell display.
iPhone 5: The design
The iPhone 5 doesn't offer a radically new shape, but the shape is about the only thing that's not radically new this year. Measuring 123.8 mm high, 58.6 mm wide, and 7.6 mm deep, the iPhone 5 rises higher than the iPhone 4S but no wider. It's also 18% thinner and 20% lighter. It's so light and thin that it almost feels fake, like a dummy phone at a carrier store. Almost. Apple claims it's both bigger and smaller, that there's both more and less of it. And that's absolutely true. In fact, it takes a moment -- an awkward, giddy moment -- to adjust to the sensory paradox. Because the overall volume of the iPhone 5 is 12% less than its predecessor, it feels like it's gone from a short, substantial slab to a long, lithe slice.
With a chassis carved from anodized 6000 series aluminum, hardened Gorilla Glass on the front, and inlays of ceramic or pigmented glass on the back, the iPhone 5 has been compared both favorably and ludicrously to precision, luxury time pieces. Hyperbole aside, the manufacturing process literally does have to be seen to be believed.
Hardware buttons on the iPhone 5 are laid out the same way they were on the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. You have the On/Off (Sleep/Wake) button on the top, the ring/silent button on the left, and the volume up (camera shutter) and volume down buttons beneath it. While the iPhone 4 Home button was nowhere near resilient enough to stand up to long term usage, the iPhone 4S fixed that problem with a better support system. The iPhone 5 feels even better than the iPhone 4S. The Home button feels "clickier" but more solid than before.
The iPhone 5 still only comes in two colors, but this year those two colors are also two-toned. There's black and slate, and white and silver. The black is Darth Vader black, and can all but disappear on a dark surface in low light. The white is Storm Trooper white, its crystalline diamond-cut chamfers brighter and shinier than ever. While the blackout look of the anodized aluminum on the black and slate iPhone 5 is more singular, more monolithic, it will also show chips, scuffs, and scratches more readily than the naked aluminum of the white and silver model. Neither, however, are immune to that particular phenomena.
I exchanged my first iPhone 5 after noticing a chip in the bezel, but the new one has held up just fine under normal, careful use. Unfortunately, there's no adamantium/vibranium super metal in the real world. The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S had glass backs that were susceptible to shattering with sufficient impact. The iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS had plastic backs that were susceptible to cracking along the edges. The iPods had and have stainless steel backs that have always been susceptible to scratching and scuffing with normal use. If maintaining a mint-condition iPhone 5 is a concern, look into getting a case or skin.
Back to the shape. Yes, the iPhone 5 is every bit the flat, rounded rectangle the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 were before it. That's intentional. It might be boring or unimaginative to some, and that's a fair point. But Apple's not playing at dice. They're not spinning fashion. They're making an iPhone. Apple is making an iPhone that looks like an iPhone the way a Lamborghini looks like a Lamborghini, and a MacBook Pro looks like a MacBook Pro -- the way any product from any high end brand looks like and embodies that brand.
Apple conceived of this iPhone form back in 2005 and has been working inexorably towards it ever since. They're closer this year than any year past, achieving an unprecedented level of thinness and lightness, a screen that dominates the front as never before, and they've finally been able to return to aluminum for the back, albeit with glass still lingering at the top and bottom.
In that regard, the leap from the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5 is no less significant, ambitious, or impressive than the leap from the original MacBook Pro to the unibody MacBook Pro in 2008. In both cases, it wasn't about making something that looked radically different but about making something that worked radically better. That's how it should be. That's what great design is all about. And if there's one thing Apple nails more consistently and constantly than any other company in modern memory, it's great design.
The real question is, once Apple fully realizes this vision of the iPhone, once they've gotten as close to perfecting it as technology allows, what will they do next?
iPhone 5: The 16:9 display
The 4-inch, 16:9 aspect ratio, 1136x640 resolution, 326ppi in-cell display is the iPhone 5's most obvious, most visually impressive new feature. Up until now, every iPhone has had a 3:2 aspect ratio display. The original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS all had 3.5-inch, 480x320 resolution, 163ppi displays. With the iPhone 4 in 2010, Apple switched to the Retina display. It was still 3.5-inches, still 3:2 ratio, but the density doubled to 960x640 at 326ppi. That made the pixels essentially disappear.
With the iPhone 5, for the first time, Apple has changed not only the screen size, but the aspect ratio as well. They've made it taller but not wider, bigger but no less dense. Retina was all about the quality of what you see. 16:9 is about the quantity.
The reason for the screen size change was likely competitive, at least in part. Some percentage of the market was choosing a bigger screen instead of an iPhone. By switching to a bigger screen, Apple has increased their addressable market, and now people can choose an iPhone with a bigger screen. At the same time, Apple wants to maximize content and minimize distractions like bezels and casing. Given LTE 4G and the new, thinner design, Apple couldn't decrease the screen-to-casing ratio by staying with a 3.5-inch display. They can -- and did -- by switching to a larger, 4-inch one.
So why 4-inches and 16:9 and not any bigger or the least bit wider? Likely because Apple didn't want to reduce the pixel density of the Retina display, impede the one-handed ease of use of the interface, or sacrifice the pocket-ability of the iPhone.
Personally, I would have have liked to see Apple prototype a 4-inch, 3:2 ratio display. It would give up some pixel density, staying at 960x640 but reducing the ppi to 288, and it wouldn't have increased the amount of information that could be displayed, like the 1136x640 resolution does. It would, however, have made everything bigger, including text, and it would have maintained app compatibility.
For some, any change from the original 3.5-inch screen will be too much. For others, anything less than 4.5-inches or more is too little. Apple typically ignores the fringes and aims squarely at the mainstream middle. This year 4-inches at 16:9 was the first and biggest compromise Apple was willing to make, and the best one in their opinion.
In addition to making the iPhone 5 display taller, Apple has also made it thinner. To do this, they used in-cell technology. This allowed Apple to combine the touch sensor into the LCD display, turning what were previously 2 discreet layers into a single layer that's 0.5mm thinner. That might not sound like a lot, but when you consider the iPhone 5 is only 7.6mm to begin with, it's significant.
The iPhone 5 display is still an LED-backlit LCD, so it's still bright and beautiful. It's remains IPS (in-plane switching) so the viewing angle remains tremendous, but in-cell makes the iPhone 5 display even better. If the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 looked like traditional cell animation, with images painted right below the glass, the iPhone 5 looks like those images are painted right into it. Once again, it looks so good it almost seems fake, like a sticker instead of a screen.
It also makes the iPhone 5 easier to use on a sunny day. Not exceptionally so, not even at a high brightness level, but better than previous generations. Add to that a 44% greater color gamut, and blacker blacks, and you have richer, truer images for everything from interfaces to avatars, photographs to videos. It's stunning, even when compared to the already stunning iPhone 4S display.
4-inches at 16:9 is a compromise, one that avoids turning the iPhone into a tiny tablet, or losing the density and the specific type of usability Apple values. The in-cell Retina display itself is not. As of right now, it might well be the best display in the business.
iPhone 5: Apple A6 performance
Apple says that the iPhone 5 is twice as fast as the iPhone 4S, which sound impressive enough. Apple doesn't typically talk in GHz or RAM when it comes to iOS devices. They prefer to bring experience to a spec fight. But specs drive the experience. They're the engine in the meticulously appointed car. They're stats behind the championship team. They're the science behind the art.
In this case, they're the Apple A6 system-on-a-chip (SoC), the first custom processor to grace the iOS platform. Previous versions of Apple's A-series, including the A4, A5, and A5X, all ran existing processor designs like the ARM Cortex A9. This year, instead of sticking with the Cortex A9 or moving on the new ARM A15, Apple zigged instead of zagged. They licensed the ARM v7s instruction set and rolled something uniquely their own -- a 32nm CMOS dual-core Apple CPU that can run from between 800MHz and 1.2GHz. Likewise, instead of going with the dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics chip found in the iPhone 4S, or the giant quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4 found in the iPad 3, Apple went with the triple-core PowerVR SGX543MP3 GPU. And they topped it all off with 1GB of RAM.
Storage isn't any bigger or any faster this year -- you have the same 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB options you had before -- but everything else about the iPhone 5 feels perceptively faster, and it's almost all because of the custom Apple A6. I didn't think Apple would go the custom CPU route for another year or two, but clearly they're investing heavily in chipset architecture and its paying off. Existing between the ARM Cortex A9 and A15, and between dual-core and quad-core PowerVR chips, freed Apple to find the best balance of performance vs. power consumption. What's more, Apple laid out the processor manually. Which is to say, by hand. That's almost unheard of these days, and shows just how seriously Apple is taking every bit and atom of the iPhone's design.
First, the numbers. While Geekbench and Sunspider are the perfunctory performance metrics, they're neither scientific measures nor real-world indicators. There's simply no way to account for the differences in architectures and "optimizations" across platforms. Likewise, HTML5test measures only iOS 6 Safari's compatibility with standards, and nothing iPhone 5-specific at al. Still, for what they're worth, here they are:
Real world performance is more important, however. How long it takes the iPhone 5 to boot, to launch and app or game, to render a website, and to resolve things like location and dictation are what really matter to real people.
In that regard, both the iPhone 4 and the iPad 3 bear the burden of being the first devices of their class to have to run Retina displays, and that drained performance away from the overall system. With that already "paid" for, the iPhone 4S flew, and the iPhone 5 flies even faster. It's so fast now, especially when combined with the new network connectivity (see below) that the mechanics really, truly disappear. Apple nailed the 1:1 multitouch tracking with the original iPhone, but some lag and stutter and delay has always lingered around the edges of the OS. Not any more, at least not that I encountered. With the iPhone 5, you're not waiting for pixels to push or on-device data to load or system processes to catch up. You're just doing. And you're doing it flawlessly enough that you don't even notice.
Apple sought to make the iPhone 5 twice as fast as the iPhone 4S and they've succeeded brilliantly. The Apple A6 is an absolute beast.
iPhone 5: LTE 4G and the radios
Apple has significantly upgraded wireless networking on the iPhone 5. While 802.11n Wi-Fi has been an option for a while now, the iPhone was previously restricted to more the crowded 2.4GHz frequency. Thanks to a Murata Wi-Fi module, which includes the Broadcom BCM4334 chip, the iPhone 5 can use 802.11n on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Bluetooth 4.0 has been carried over from the iPhone 4S, and while its low-power, instant pairing holds the same promise today that it did last year, we're still waiting for the accessory industry to catch up and make good on that promise.
What there isn't is NFC (Near-field Communications), which is used for commercial transactions, rapid checkins, and other, similar, touch-and-go data exchanges. Apple doesn't seem to believe NFC is the solution to any current mainstream problem, at least not yet. There are other technologies Apple can and is using for similar purposes, like the mobile checkout option on the Apple Store app, but it'll likely be a while before Apple thinks the market is ready for a full-out Apple NFC or NFC-like solution. It's chicken-and-the-egg, of course, but Apple has traditionally been conservative when it comes to radios. They waited until the second generation iPhone to add GPS and 3G, after all, and until now to add LTE 4G.
LTE 4G (Long Term Evolution) provides for a theoretical maximum of 100Mbps, which is faster than many home-based ISP connections. The iPad got LTE 4G support back in March, and performed incredibly well with it. The iPhone 5 adds newer, more advanced radio chipsets -- the Qualcomm MDM9615 and RTR8600. It also keeps the iPhone 4S dynamic antenna design, which reduces the likelihood of attenuation and allows for the best signal connection possible.
LTE 4G support is split over three models, two GSM and one CDMA, in order to meet the needs of different international carriers on different bands, and segments of those bands. According to Apple, current iPhone 5 LTE 4G supports:
Model A1428: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (AWS, 700b MHz) for AT&T, Rogers/Fido, Bell/Virgin, and TELUS/Koodo
Model A1429: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (2100, 1800, 850, 700c, 1900 MHz) for Verizon, Sprint, and KDDI
Model A1429*: UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (2100, 1800, 850 MHz) for Deutsche Telekom, EE, Optus/Virgin, Telstra, Softbank, SK Telecom, KT, SmarTone, M1, and SingTel.
LTE 4G is particularly important for Verizon and Sprint customers. While the iPhone 4S could reach a theoretical speed of 14.4Mbps on the HSPA networks used by AT&T and other GSM carriers, Verizon and Sprint iPhone 4S customers were stuck on EVDO rev A's meager 3.1Mbps. So, customers were forced to choose between fast (AT&T) and reliable (Verizon) or unlimited (Sprint). Verizon had the first and fastest LTE 4G roll out in the U.S., so not being able to take advantage of it, especially considering how slow EVDO is, was especially irksome. No longer. The iPhone 5 on Verizon is now a first class data speed citizen.
My tests of LTE 4G performance have been a little strange, however. Given current tower loads, I average 30Mbps on the iPad 3 on the Rogers network. I spike at 30Mbps with the iPhone 5, but average 15Mbps. Tethering my iPad or my Mac to my iPhone 5, however, averages 30Mbps, just as I would expect. I'm inclined to chalk this up to some aberration on my phone or my carrier, however. Our community iPhone 5 speed test results show a much more normal, much more expected pattern of LTE 4G results.
Technical details aside, the iPhone 5 on LTE 4G is fast. It's so fast you may forget you aren't on Wi-Fi. For that reason, just as with iPad 3 LTE 4G, you're well advised to keep an eye on bandwidth caps, especially if you're streaming a lot of video or doing a lot of tethering. (The iPad 3 is still a better choice for tethering given that it's battery is much, much bigger, and if you drain it, you aren't without your phone.)
There are compromises here as well, however. Because Apple is prioritizing battery life, they're doing everything on a single radio with a single process, and because no carrier yet supports VOLTE (Voice Over LTE), the iPhone can't handle simultaneous voice and LTE data connections the way phones that use dual radio connections can. That means, if you're using LTE data and a voice call comes in, you'll drop down to HSPA data on AT&T and other GSM networks. And -- you guessed it! -- because Verizon and Sprint don't offer HSPA/GSM data, unless you're on Wi-Fi, you'll drop completely off of data while you talk, just like EVDO rev. A on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.
The good news is, in addition to LTE 4G, the iPhone 5 supports speedy DC-HSPA (Dual Carrier HSPA) and HSPA+ data, with a theoretical maximum speed of 42Mbps. Also, unlike early LTE 4G phones, the iPhone 5 seems to handle the drop down to HSPA and return to LTE 4G with incredible speed and grace. It works well enough in my tests that I doubt most GSM users will even notice the change.
Because of LTE 4G, every iPhone now has a SIM card slot and tray, even on Verizon and Sprint. And just like the iPhone 4 switched from mini-SIM to micro-SIM, the iPhone 5 switches to nano-SIM. It's the same chip, just absent almost all the plastic surrounding it. You'll need one to use the iPhone 5, and most carriers are supplying them now. If you buy an unlocked iPhone 5 with the intention of traveling and using local SIM cards to save on roaming, you might have trouble finding them, especially on pre-paid/pay-as-you-go plans. At least for now. (Buying a mini- or micro-SIM and cutting it down is an option.)
In addition to telephone service, with iOS 6, Apple and the carriers have mostly gotten FaceTime enabled over 3G/4G. Mostly. Some carriers -- like AT&T -- are only allowing it on certain plans, which is a move composed of utter cattle refuse. Be that as it may, it's not a feature specific to the iPhone 5 but it is a feature made better by the iPhone 5's LTE 4G networking.
As far as I know, Apple still hasn't lived up to their promise to release the open-standards based FaceTime protocol as an open standard, so other platforms beyond iOS and OS X can implement it and make it truly, universally useful. If you are all in on Apple's ecosystem, however, it works incredibly well of LTE 4G. Again, well enough that you don't even realize you're not on Wi-Fi.
And when it comes to LTE 4G, that's exactly what you want.
iPhone 5: The iSight and FaceTime cameras
On paper, it doesn't seem like the iPhone 5's rear-facing iSight camera got much of a boost this year. It reads as the same 8 megapixels, backside illuminated, hybrid IR filtered, 5-element, f/2.4 aperture camera as last year's iPhone 4S. And, even though the iPhone 5 now has a 16:9 screen, still photos remain 4:3 at 3264x2448px. Likewise, the LED flash seems to look and work the same as last year.
Apple does list some improvements to the iPhone 5 iSight, however. There's a new, dynamic low-light mode that combines pixels together for what Apple claims is up to 2 f-stops better performance. Apple also claims the 5-element lens has been aligned with even greater precision for even greater sharpness. Also, the surface of the iSight is now made out of sapphire crystal to make it more scratch resistant.
The Apple A6 chipset lends a hand here as well, with a new image signal processor (ISP) that allows for spatial noise reduction by looking at surrounding pixels to better detect and remove noise, especially in low-light conditions, while at the same time preserving large areas of contiguous color. It also makes getting to the camera, both through the fast camera swipe on the Lock screen and the Camera app itself, much quicker, and increases the shutter speed to make taking a photo faster as well. Apple says 40% faster, but regardless of the exact number, it's a perceptible increase.
Most impressively, Apple has done all this in a camera that's 25% smaller than the one in iPhone 4S. Camera lenses dislike thinness, but humans like thinner phones. While some other manufacturers have resorted to adding crude bumps to allow large cameras on the backs of their otherwise thin phones, Apple's compromise here was to keep the same quality camera, enhance it slightly, but engineer it into the 18% thinner iPhone 5 body. That's a remarkable feat of engineering.
So, boiling it all down, photos are much faster to take on the iPhone 5. Standard photos look great, though about as great as you'd get on the iPhone 4S. They do seem much, much better on screen, however, but only because the iPhone 5's display is so much better. HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos show marked improvements, and so much so that if you're taking landscapes you'll want to turn it on and leave it on. Sadly, while low-light has also improved and noise has been reduced, it's not by much and blur will still occur if and when your subject moves. Happily, Apple seems to have fixed the problem with focus that plagued macro shots on the iPhone 4S. You can now get really close without worrying that your subject will elude capture.
If you're looking for the highest end glass you can hang off a phone, however, Apple's not on that particular bleeding edge. Nokia recently grafted a 41 megapixel lens on a Symbian camera just to show they could. Sure, it looks like it's face-hugging the body, but it shoots amazing pictures. Likewise, the upcoming Nokia Lumia 920 will use a much less pornographic version of the same PureView system, including an optical image stabilization system that actually floats the lens hardware, allowing the shutter to stay open longer and capture a better photo. Both Nokia and HTC are fielding f/2.0 lenses now as well. But the Nokia Lumia 920 is 10.7mm thick compared to the iPhone 5's 7.6 mm. That's the tradeoff for someone who values a light, thin phone that can also shoot really good photos.
While not unique to the iPhone 5, iOS 6 also has a new panoramic photography mode built-in. It uses the iSight in standard mode, so you don't get many of the benefits of the iPhone 5's specific iSight camera, but it still lets you make remarkably good looking panoramas at up to 240 degrees and 28 megapixels (~10800x2332px), with remarkably little effort.
The front-facing FaceTime camera is still meant more for videos than stills, but since it's been upgraded from 0.3 to 1.2 megapixels and given backlight illumination and face detection, if you need a new avatar or profile pic, you'll get a much better one with the iPhone 5 than you would have with any previous model. For anything else, you'll still want to use the iSight on the back.
Video likewise remains 1080p and 30 FPS on the iPhone 5 iSight -- there likely won't be, nor will there need to be, a 4K camera on a mobile device any time soon. Unlike still photography, however, video recording benefits greatly from the 16:9 aspect ratio. Apple drops away the menu bar when in video mode, switching to a translucent interface that really lets you see the full frame
Previously, if you wanted to capture a photo while recording video, you had to press Home and the On/Off button at the same time to grab a screenshot, either while you were filming, or later, while you were playing it back. Now you simply tap the Camera button and a photo gets taken while video continues to record. And with excellent shutter speed too.
There is a compromise, however. Photos captured while recording video are only 1920x1080px resolution. That's significantly smaller than the still camera's 3264x2448px. For most situations, however, the convenience eclipses the pixel cost.
Like with stills, lowlight performance has been nominally improved for iPhone 5 video, though it varies from slightly to unnoticeably depending on the specifics of any scene. Either way, there'll still be grain. Video stabilization, however, has been more noticeably improved, though it can still shimmer at times when motion is minimal. Face detection for up to 10 faces, previously available on the iPhone 4S for still photography only, is now also available for video as well on the iPhone 5.
The front-facing camera has had a more significant update, with Apple finally bringing the same 720p FaceTime HD capability to iOS that they brought to the Mac over a year ago. It works great, especially compared to the profoundly lackluster VGA camera that preceded it, and is now more than good enough for a video call or a YouTube-style chat-at-the-world video.
Back when Apple introduced the iPhone 4, they added a second mic to the top. With the iPhone 5 they've added a third mic, nestled between the iSight camera and the LED flash on the top back. Along with the traditional mic at the bottom, all three are multifunctional, now in recognition of the multifunctional ways we now use our phones. Having all three spread out the way they are means that whether you're using your iPhone as a phone, as a speaker phone, for a FaceTime call, to record a video, or to use Siri or Dictation, there's a greater likelihood you'll be heard. It also means there's a greater chance one of the mics will be well-positioned for noise-cancellation. Having three mics also means Apple can do beamforming, allowing Siri and Dictation to better discern words from the noise around them.
Apple has also -- finally -- paid some attention to the main speaker at the bottom of the iPhone. With the iPhone 5, it now has a five magnet transducer, up from the two magnet transducer in previous models. Apple says that gives a better frequency response, even though the speaker itself is now 20% smaller. In our tests, the speaker did sound louder and slightly clearer, but not blow-your-hair-back better. While I certainly wouldn't want gimmicks, it would be nice for Apple to continue do everything they can to improve external speaker quality -- they are the company that brought us iTunes + iPod, after all. For everything from conferencing to hands-free to FaceTime calls, when you don't have a headset handy, the main speaker simply has to deliver.
The iPhone 5 earpiece speaker has gotten noise cancellation now as well, which aids in removing ambient sounds and makes conversation cleaner and clearer. Apple has also added support for wideband audio (HD Voice being a popular brand thereof), which uses a compression method that better fills out the frequency spectrum to make voices sound more natural, and pulls them out from surrounding audio to make them more distinct. (Would that Music.app could apply it to undo the effects of AutoTune...) However, wideband audio requires carrier support and compatibility, and not all carriers support it yet, and of those that do, not all are compatible with the iPhone. Apple did say they had 20 carriers ready with wideband audio at launch, including Deutsche Telekom and Orange, but that's few enough that it should still be considered more of a bonus at this point than a standard feature. In other words, it's a big mess, and we'll probably have several more generations of iPhone released before most of us see the benefit of it.
Anecdotally, however, calls I've made with the iPhone 5 do sound much better and sometimes much more human than any cellular phone I've used before.
The 3.5 mm headset jack on the iPhone 5 has been moved to the bottom of the device, similar to where it's always been on the iPod touch. This isn't great news for people who liked to put their iPhone in a dock while listening to music or making calls using a headset, but it'll be welcomed by those who frequently pocket their iPhones while doing just that. Apple isn't even selling a dock for the iPhone 5, so their numbers probably tell them the latter group is more common than the former.
Included in the box with the iPhone 5 is a pair of Apple's brand new EarPods. (They're also available separately for $29.) 3 years in development, they're Apple's attempt to improve upon the ubiquitous but not well loved little white earbuds that previously shipped with iOS devices. The EarPods come in a proper package, similar to the one Apple's offered with their higher-end in-ear headsets for years, which is a great way to prevent tangles or damage in pockets, purses, and bags.
The shape of the EarPods is a significant divergence from the original earbuds. Instead of being uniformly round, the EarPods are asymmetrically shaped and, according to Apple, ergonomically designed to better fit a wider range of ears. No one product could ever truly fit every shape and size of ear, however. The original earbuds wouldn't stay in my ears for more than a few moments, and I've even found high end in-ear headsets challenging to keep in. The EarPods are much better than the earbuds ever were in that regard, though still not perfect, at least not for me.
Sound is noticeably improved with the EarPods, however, especially clarity and bass. A large part of that is due to their new, multi-port design. The main EarPod speaker directs sound into your ear. The port on the back is tuned to mid-range frequencies and is intended to improve consistency of experience. Ports in the stem are meant to improve bass. Air channels reduce pressure on the speaker so it can concentrate on providing greater low-frequency sound.
The remote and mic functions the same with the EarPods as it did with previous iPhone earbuds, allowing you to control both music and phone calls. The in-line remote is larger now, though, making it much easier to fumble for and use in real-world situations.
The new Apple EarPods won't replace your $100+ in-ears or cans, much less your high-end custom jobs, but they're a fantastic replacement for the generally poor earbuds that came before.
iPhone 5: The Lightning connector
After almost 10 years and who knows how many cables, Apple has officially retired the fat, thick, unidirectional, 30-pin Dock connector and introduced a new, small, thin, ambi-copular interconnect for the next decade. Branded Lightning, it's 80% smaller and offers 8-signals that are all digital.
Apple couldn't use their new desktop connector, ThunderBolt, because iOS devices don't have the required PCI architecture to support it. That means, yes, Lightning is not as fast as ThunderBolt. It also means that, while Lightning is all new on one side, it's still stuck on chunky, unidirectional USB 2 on the other. (It's possible Lightning may support USB 3, though the read/write speeds of current NAND Flash memory will at some point become a bottleneck.)
With the advent of technologies like AirPlay, which wirelessly streams video and audio, Wi-Fi Sync which wirelessly exchanges data with iTunes, AirPrint, which wirelessly sends jobs to printers, Bluetooth 4.0 which will -- eventually -- enable a new generation of wireless accessories, and iCloud which cut the cord to the PC, why not just eliminate the Dock connector entirely?
Because wired connectors still remain useful for more quickly moving large files around and, critically, for charging. Unlike Palm, Samsung, and Nokia, Apple doesn't yet see wireless charging as viable mainstream feature, and even if they did, it would be years before it could replace wired charging completely. So, the cable has to stick around and, instead of eliminating it, Apple's making it smarter.
Because it's digital, Lightning can be adaptive and provide the right signal for the accessory you're plugging in. (The old 30-pin Dock wasn't, and so needed those 30-pins for everything from USB to HDMI to serial to line-in to component and composite video to... you get the idea.)
For legacy accessories, Apple is currently offering 30-pin Dock to Lightning adapters, both with and without a short extension cord. To comply with European Union regulations, Apple is also offering a micro-USB to Lightning adapter. These don't support video-out, unfortunately, though Apple has said HDMI and VGA adapters will be available at some point.
Analog video and serial breakouts for older TVs and scientific instruments probably aren't on the agenda, though, and while it's possible they may appear in some form in the future, changes to Apple's licensing that coincides with Lightning might make it more difficult for small suppliers to manufacture niche cables and accessories, "encouraging" the move to modern video standards and Bluetooth 4.0 for connectivity.
I only ever plug my iPhone in to charge any more, and Lightning really makes no difference for that, at least not yet. It requires new cables or adapters that cost money, however, which is annoying. Inarguably, Lightning is better and more modern than 30-pin as an interconnect, but there's no compelling new accessories to "sell" that yet.
That might make it sound like all Lightning gives us is pain and turbulence right now, but there is one killer new feature that Lightning did immediately enable -- a thinner iPhone.
iPhone 5: The battery life
The iPhone 5 has a lithium-ion battery that can be charged via the included Lightning cable connected to a powered USB port or an AC adapter. The iPhone 5's battery is 1440 mAh, which is up 10 mAh from last year's iPhone 4S. Talk time on 3G is rated the same 8 hours as the iPhone 4S, though standby time has increased by 25 hours and now reaches 225 hours. (There's no voice over LTE yet, so no LTE talk time.) Internet use time is also up, increasing 2 hours on 3G and 1 hour on Wi-Fi to 8 and 10 hours respectively. The iPhone 5 is also rated for 8 hours on LTE. Audio and video playback remain 10 and 40 hours respectively.
In our tests, Apple's numbers have proven roughly accurate. Leaving an iPhone 5 for extended periods of time, for example overnight, has resulted in minimal battery drain, and with moderate use the iPhone 5 has easily lasted a day. With heavy use, like a day on the road or at a conference, you'll need to re-charge, perhaps more than once.
Carriers and signal quality have traditionally also played a huge part in iPhone battery life. With previous iPhones, when I've left Rogers and roamed on AT&T, my battery life has taken a huge hit (I could literally watch it drain as the radio screamed, trying to get a signal.) We've seen similar results with a Rogers iPhone 5 roaming on AT&T -- significantly lower battery life. This review covers the iPhone 5 on a good carrier with a strong, consistent signal. Anything less and battery life will suffer.
Because of all the push, location, and iCloud services in iOS, and the speed of LTE data, you can hit the iPhone 5 really hard if you try. If you restored from a previous iPhone, you could also have problems at the system level that reduces battery life. If you set up as a new iPhone and are still having issues, check with Apple. On an iPhone 5 that was set up as new, and running a decent amount of push, location, iCloud, and other services, my battery life has been excellent.
Otherwise, until battery packs and battery cases are updated for Lightning and the new design, you'll need adapters and maybe some McGyver skills.
The iPhone 5 ships with iOS 6, which boats over 200 new, customer-facing features including an all new Maps app, new Siri functionality, deep Facebook integration, shared Photo Streams, Passbook, new capabilities for Phone, Mail, and Safari, FaceTime over cellular, enhanced Accessibility, and improved support for China.
Unlike previous years, where video recording, FaceTime, and Siri were all exclusive to the new hardware, almost none of the new features in iOS 6 are exclusive to the iPhone 5. Make of that what you will.
For a complete look at iOS 6, including all of the features mentioned above, see our definitive guide:
The major difference for iOS 6 on the iPhone 5 is the change in aspect ration from 2:3 to 16:9, and in pixel count from 960x640 to 1136x640. That means everyone from Apple to App Store developers have an extra 176x640 pixels to play with.
For Apple, 16:9 allows for an extra row of icons on the Home screen and in folders, an extra list item in Mail or in Music, and a bigger display area in Maps and FaceTime. Since, unlike the iPad, the iPhone is based on a single-column interface, the lack of additional width is seldom if ever an issue in portrait mode. Curiously, Apple isn't vertically centering album art on the Lock screen with the iPhone. Hopefully that's a bug scheduled for imminent squash-age.
In landscape mode, 16:9 allows for most HD video content to fill the screen with nary a letterbox in sight, and Camera's translucent video recording interface makes excellent use of the aspect ratio (see screen shots in the display and camera sections, above). Calendar can now show 5 full days in week view rather than just 3.3 and Apple has enhanced Safari with a full-screen mode which, like the new, icon-based Share Sheets minimize the perceptive loss of vertical height and, frankly, the ridiculously long horizontal interface elements. (Except for the landscape keyboard, that's wider and thicker, but not much better.)
What Apple hasn't done, however, is take any advantage of the bigger screen on the system level. Banners still overlap and obscure menu bar buttons instead of elegantly pushing them down, and notifications still don't present any actionable interface for quickly replying to a text or adjusting an alarm. And there's no bonus number row on the portrait keyboard. Apple has used those extra 176x640 pixels merely to add more content, not add more functionality.
Hopefully it's early days still, and future versions of iOS will do something more interesting with the space.
For third party App Store apps, developers have to add support for the 16:9 display and signal it by including a special PNG file in their build. Many developers have already updated their apps. Most of these are list-based (UITableView) or grid-based (UICollectView) or use new, flexible methods (AutoLayout) that allow for relative positioning regardless of screen size. That's important, because they still have to support 3:2 on older devices still on the market and still being sold. Likewise, games that use OpenGL can go 16:9 but could still have interface elements that require work to get right.
Apps or games with a ton of custom graphics will have to be redone, and redone in a way that lets them properly fill the screen, regardless of which screen they have to fill. That'll take time. Until then, Apple will letter-box them (or pillar-box them in landscape mode), centering them on the screen and filling the empty space with black. On the new black and slate iPhone, it's almost invisible. On the white and silver, it's more visible.
A bigger problem is system overlays. On letter-boxed apps, the status bar and the keyboard still render relative to the app, not the the phone. So the status bar is lower than you'd expect at a glance, and the keyboard, higher. It's awkward and takes some getting used to. It might have looked funny if Apple bound them to the absolute top and bottom of the screen, but it might also have worked better. Also
Unlike Apple, some App Store apps are offering different interfaces on 16:9 displays. Given the fat status of binaries already, what with universal apps that support iPhone and iPod touch interfaces and separate iPad interfaces, in standard and Retina (@2x) densities, one of the last things download sizes need is another interface to cram in there. Other apps are simply revealing extra content areas -- opening on 16:9 what is closed on 3:2, or adding something in wide screen that's not there in standard.
No doubt we'll be seeing a lot more from developers and designers when they've had a chance to really work on the new hardware.
This might seems like a strange combination for a review section, but if you've ever had a problem with your iPhone, it'll make perfect sense. When you buy an iPhone 5 at Apple Retail, they'll help you choose it, set it up, and teach you how to use it. And if you have a problem with it, they'll often go out of their way to fix it for you.
Contrast this with non-Apple devices, where your problems are left to the mercy of big box or carrier customer service reps who, even if they're inclined to help you, typically need to mail your device away, a process that can take days or more. And when you get the replacement, while some information can be resynchronized over-the-air or via cable, it's often not an easy or complete process.
On launch day, my original iPhone 5 had a chip in the bezel. I returned to the Apple Store, was greeted, explained the problem, and immediately received a replacement iPhone. Then I entered my iCloud ID, and walked out with everything setting, app, piece of content, and bit of data exactly the same as I'd walked in with. A brand new phone, but exactly my phone.
No matter how you want to parse it, that's a feature of a phone, one Apple gets right, and one few if any competitors can or will match.
iPhone 5: App and accessory compatibility
The iPhone 5 is compatible with all of the hundreds of thousands of iPhone apps in the App Store, though not all of them have yet been updated to support the new 16:9 display (see Interface, above).
The iPhone is not compatible with most previous iPhone 5 cases due to differences in physical dimensions (see Design, above). Some large pouch or bag cases might fit. Most won't.
The iPhone 5 may be compatible with some accessories built for a 30-pin Dock connector, including cradles and stereos, provided the current 30-pin to Lightning connector adapters provide the right signals and can be properly attached. Anything that uses composite or component video out is not currently compatible, though Apple says HDMI and VGA adapters are in the works. (See Lightning connector, above.)
Headsets are compatible, and Bluetooth accessories should be compatible, though we've gotten reports of bugs with some car systems which may require a software updates from the vendor or Apple to rectify.
iPhone 5 pricing remains the same this year as last:
$199/16GB, $299/32GB, $399/64GB on contract
$649/16GB, $749/32GB, $849/64GB off contract
In what might well be Apple's most ambitious iPhone roll-out to date, they promised availability in 100 countries and on 240 carriers.
Available now: U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the U.K.
Available on September 28: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
iPhone 5: Buyers guide
If you don't happen to like iOS or the iPhone at all, there's nothing in the iPhone 5 to change your mind. Get something else. There are severalgood options already, and maybe more to come.
If you've previously been interested in iOS and the iPhone, but the lack of a bigger screen or LTE made you hold off, then go check it out. Chances are you'll like, if not love what you see. It's still the default phone I recommend, and the one that will appeal most to most users.
If you currently have an iPhone 4 or earlier, the iPhone 5 is an excellent upgrade. It's everything you love about your current iPhone, only better. Much better.
If you currently have an iPhone 4S, unless you really want the bigger screen and the LTE networking, there's little reason to upgrade. The iPhone 4S is still a great device, and iOS 6 does pretty much everything on it that it does on iPhone 5.
Apple may have revolutionized the smartphone in 2007 but they're not the only ones bringing their A-game in 2012. There are now a wide range of highly competitive devices available in most markets, with different form factors, feature sets, and focuses, each of which will appeal to a different type of smartphone users.
The danger of being overly focused is that you lose sight of the periphery. The key is to be fixed but not fixated. It can be a razor-fine line, and one Apple often seems to cascade down with reckless abandon. Some say Apple is trapped by designs and ideas of the past, obsessed with aesthetics and compromised by self-interest, at war with one-time partners, and oblivious to user pain and competitive pressures. Others, that Apple is better than any other company in the world at determining what exactly the market wants, at pushing the boundaries of manufacturing and technology to make the future manifest now, at taking calculated risks that pay off over years rather than months, and at following precisely-timed revolution with indefatigable evolution, even if it costs them parters, and sometimes customers, over the short term.
Elements of both are likely true. One day Apple will come to the end of this iPhone line and they'll have to re-imagine or replace the iPhone the way they have the iPod. But it won't be this day or this iPhone.
Taller, thinner, faster, lighter, brighter; the iPhone 5 represents nothing more nor less than the latest, relentless iteration on the Platonic ideal Apple has been striving towards for almost a decade. Redesigned in every way but shape, compromised but true to its purpose, the iPhone 5 is once again the best iPhone Apple has ever made, and one of the best phones ever made. Period.
Leanna Lofte, Ally Kazmucha, Georgia, and Anthony contributed photography, videography, research, testing, and large amounts of time and effort to this review
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