iPhone 5

We've already shown you just how stunning the new design looks in our iPhone 5 gallery but we also want to go in for a much closer look at all the little details. Apple is manufacturing the iPhone 5 using some incredibly advanced equipment and tolerances measured in microns. The backing is anodized 6000 series aluminum with ceramic or pigmented glass inlays. The iSight camera is covered by sapphire crystal and the beveled edges are cut by crystalline diamond. It's been said the iPhone 5 is closer in kind to a luxury time piece than what's traditionally passed for consumer electronics.

How much of that is just marketing and ad copy, and how much is reality undistorted? If the details matter that much to Apple, how well did they execute on those details? Let's take a really close look...

Apple has released four new adverts to coincide with the availability of the iPhone 5. Three of the ads concentrate solely on the iPhone 5 while the other is all about its new Earpods.The adverts are called Thumb, Cheese, Physics and Ears.

Even though the iPhone 5 didn't get a boost in megapixels, it did receive some enhancements that should produce clearer, more vibrant images while reducing noise in low light situations. The iPhone 5's predecessor, the iPhone 4S already took amazing pictures in its own right, and the iPhone 5 camera will replace the need of a standalone camera for even more iPhone owners.

Our readers continue to demonstrate to us every week through our iPhone photography tutorials and weekly photo contests just how well their iPhones capture the moments that matter most to them.

We've had some time to put the iPhone 5's new and improved camera through it's paces, including a complete hardware and software breakdown. So let's see how, if at all, the iPhone 5 camera makes those captured moments better.

Some preliminary tests are showing that users can pop an AT&T or T-Mobile SIM card into a Verizon-branded iPhone 5, and you can get HSPA+ service as normal (assuming, of course, the GSM SIM is active). This is great news for T-Mobile customers that worried about having to unlock the SIM slot on their shiny new iPhone 5, as well as frequent flyers that regularly swap out SIM cards for local service. You can always shave down your own nano SIM cards, though it's generally not recommended.

The iPhone 5 isn't just one of the most advanced pieces of consumer electronics ever made, Apple has taken the design and manufacturing itself well beyond the next level. Measured now in microns, the precision is as impressive as it is ephemeral -- easily seen in the fit and finish of every part up close, but disappearing instantly when you start using it, when it just becomes the phone, internet communicator, or widescreen iPod in your hand.

So lets take a moment to appreciate the iPhone 5 as object, as a piece of industrial design, as the craftsman of Apple and Jonathan Ive and Bob Mansfield and their teams, as a thing of beauty.

One anonymous Sprint retailer is apparently refusing to sell iPhone 5 devices to customers unless they also buy a bundle of accessories to go with it. The sure, the bundles they were offering were 20% off, but the cheapest ones started at $84. Sprint commented on the issue and said that it's not corporate policy to do this kind of thing, though indirect retailers can do whatever they want. 

No sooner had people got their hands on the iPhone 5 did they gleefully chuck it to the ground to see how well it could take a drop. Two impact tests are already showing that the iPhone 5 is a tough little cookie, thanks in no small part by the lack of a glass rear like that on the iPhone 4 and 4S.

The iPhone 5 is just barely available to the public and already two high-volume burglaries have cleared out the inventory in some stores. In the UK, an O2 store assistant from Ilford is suspect of stealing some 252 iPhone 5 units and an unspecified amount of cash from the store's safe at around 1:30 AM this morning.