 Hey, this is Josh from The Verge, and we're taking a look at the iPhone 5, Apple's latest entry into the smartphone market, and perhaps the best iPhone ever. The design of the phone may look familiar to you. It uses essentially the same body shape and components as the previous iPhone 4S, but the build of the phone is completely new. In fact, I spoke to Phil Schiller at the launch event for the phone, and he told me that while the design is an iteration of the previous version, it's kind of built from the ground up with new processes and new materials and new funky style. And the phone does look different when you get up close and personal with it. It's got these edges, these mirrored edges that are really beautiful looking. It's thinner, it's a little bit taller because it's got a bigger screen, and it is using some new materials. There's glass on it, but you've also got this new aluminum back, which feels a lot better in the hand, and presumably is harder to break than a piece of glass. The phone is also lighter than the previous version. It's actually a lot lighter. The first time I picked it up, I almost dropped it because I was expecting more heft. It feels smaller, it's thinner, but it overall feels smaller even though it's a little bit taller. The width is exactly the same as the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 4, so typing on it won't seem weird or awkward for most people. Apple has moved the location of the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone, and it sits next to the new lightning dock connector, which replaces the 30-pin port that was on every previous version of the iPhone. The main reason for this is that it takes up less space. It's a much, much smaller jack. In fact, it's about the size of a micro USB port, but I'm sure that it will rile a lot of owners of accessories. Apple does make an adapter that you can stick in here that will take it from lightning to 30-pin, though it does lose some functionality such as iPod control. Inside the box, Apple has bundled their new earbuds they call EarPods, which they say they spent three years working on. Generally, they do sound a little bit better than the old versions. They're very bass-heavy, even if they're not completely pushed deep into your ear. For me, they didn't sit in my ear very well. They basically kind of fell out when I put them in. I have a pair of RHA earbuds that I paid about 35 bucks for that I think do a slightly better job in terms of sound reproduction, but as far as a bundled pair of earbuds, the EarPods do a pretty decent job. On the front of the phone is that new four-inch display, which is 1136 by 640. It's a retina display and has the same pixel density as the previous version. Next to the older phone, it definitely looks a lot better, and even compared to terrific screens like the HTC One X display, it stands out as possibly the best looking display on the market right now. It's actually a little perplexing as to why they made the screen larger, because there's nothing in iOS 6 that really seems to be taking advantage of it, and in fact, as I mentioned in my review, there are some obvious areas where I feel they could have utilized the screen, for instance, with making the notifications a little less obtrusive, which Apple hasn't done. Apple has tweaked all of its first-party apps to utilize the extra space on the screen, and if you're running an older app, it will display the app in its original size with black bars on the top and bottom or sides of it, which isn't really that distracting, and certainly on the black version of the phone, you barely notice, but already developers are working on new versions of their applications, for instance, the CNN app, which takes full advantage of this space. Inside Apple says the phone has been completely revamped as well. There's a new A6 chip, LTE on Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T here in the US, and in lots of other places around the world. A larger battery, which Apple claims gets better battery life. The camera has been improved a bit as well. It's an 8 megapixel camera, which is what the 4S had, but Apple claims the optics have been improved, and based on the shots I've taken with it, I have to agree with them. The front-facing camera is now a 1.2 megapixel HD camera. That's 720p, not 1080, and you can do HD FaceTime calls with it as well. Along with the iPhone 5, Apple has introduced the latest version of its operating system, iOS 6. They've added some sharing options, which is really helpful. They've added Twitter and now Facebook into the notification center. They've added options to share via Twitter and Facebook in a bunch of different apps, Safari for instance, which is very helpful. There are some more sizable additions to iOS 6. The biggest one is probably Maps. Apple has changed the Maps application to utilize its own services rather than Google Maps, and it's caused something of an uproar. The new Maps are excellent for turn-by-turn directions, and the turn-by-turn worked really well when I was driving around, but for getting around a big city and for getting detailed information on points of interest, restaurants, or shops, it is severely lacking right now. One of the more troubling aspects of the new version of Maps, at least for me, is that it doesn't provide any transit directions integrated with the Maps itself. It requests that you go find an app that it can plug into, and then even when you get those transit directions, you're taken from Maps to that application to get the directions. They're not integrated into the Maps application itself. Apple did add a pretty cool new feature called Flyover, which is a real-time 3D rendering of major cities. It doesn't always perfectly represent what it's rendering. In fact, there are some parts of New York that look basically destroyed by it, but it is impressive when it's working, and it's working most of the time. The unfortunate thing about Flyover is that it has really limited use. You're not looking at an awesome display of Flyover when you're navigating. You're trying to figure out where you're supposed to go, and for day-to-day use, I would rather have Street View on my device than a really cool render of the tops of buildings. Apple's also made some pretty big improvements to Siri. Even though the app isn't out of beta, it does seem to be giving better answers and getting those answers faster than previously. I will say that while using iOS 6, I was constantly reminded of just how dated the software feels. It's not that it's bad. In fact, it's a really excellent mobile operating system, but it just seems to be more difficult to do the things that I find myself doing all the time. For instance, checking Twitter constantly or sharing things with people on different services or taking actions on notifications, which Apple doesn't really give you an opportunity to do, or changing settings on apps, which is often confusing and convoluted, for instance, opening a private browsing tab in Safari. By my count, it takes about six different steps to do that. The iPhone 5 is, without question, the best iPhone ever made, and for the mass market, it's the best smartphone on the market, in my opinion. But there is a segment of the market, myself included, that would like to see smartphones and smartphone OSes really evolve and really try to innovate. And at this point, I don't feel like Apple's really doing that with the iPhone.