iPhone 5 features biggest screen yet

Apple shared the first features for its next smartphone, the iPhone 5, including a bigger and higher resolution 4-inch display, support for LTE 4GE wireless, and faster performance. At a press event in San Francisco today, Apple debuted its next device that will lead its phenomenally successful iPhone line. Since the iPhone's introduction in 2007, the company has sold over 400 million iOS devices. Shipping on September 21, the iPhone 5 will come in black and white, and will launch with three models, each priced according to their storage: $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, and $399 or 64GB (prices presume a two-year contract with a carrier). Compared to the iPhone 4S released last October, the new model is 18 percent thinner and 20 percent lighter, despite having a display that's .5 inches bigger (1136 x 640 resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio) -- this is the largest screen for an iPhone yet. Existing games and applications built for smaller iPhone displays will show up letterboxed on the iPhone 5's 4-inch screen until developers update them to accommodate for the extra space. The iPhone 5 offers a new A6 chip that promises to deliver 2x faster performance across the board. To demonstrate, EA Studios showed off Real Racing 3 (pictured) at the press conference, boasting "full console-quality" graphics for the mobile device. EA Studios also mentioned a Real Racing 3 feature made possible by updates to Apple's mobile social game network Game Center: time-shifted head-to-head multiplayer. Players are able to compete against their friends on a track they raced on earlier. "To marry mobile with console graphics, it's never been done before," said Apple's marketing SVP Philip Schiller, according to a report from The Verge. Furthermore, Apple has now integrated three microphones into the smartphone (on the bottom, front, and back of the device), and enhanced its camera and video capturing. With the iPhone 5's release Apple has updated its pricing for previous hardware: the 8GB iPhone 4 is now free, while the 16GB iPhone 4S is $99 (again, presuming a two-year contract with a carrier). The company took some time to announce a new iPod Touch, too. The device will feature the same 4-inch screen as the iPhone 5, an iSight camera (previous models had no camera), and an A5 chip with a CPU that's up to two times faster than the previous iPod Touches. NaturalMotion, maker of iOS hit CSR Racing, showed how developers can do more with the new iPod Touch than they could with previous models, by showing off a Clumsy Ninja, in which a character reacted to player's real world actions (using the camera). When it releases in October, the new iPod Touch will come in five colors -- white, black, blue, yellow, and red -- and will have a 32GB model ($299) and a 64GB model ($399). Along with these hardware releases, Apple will roll out the next major operating system update for its mobile and tablet devices, iOS6, on September 19 to iPhones (3GS and newer) and iPads (second generation and newer). [Image via GDGT]