iPhone 5

Huh?? Are you saying iOS6 discriminates against rural dwellers??

Hah, starting to believe are we? I assume you saw this or similar...

http://www.slashgear.com/iphone-5-all-hail-the-browser-power-hero-19248422/

I only have a lowly 4 (which is over two years old now), so its way off the pace.  

Sunspider 0.9.1 benchmarks

3469.9  +/- 1.2% iOS 5.1.1

2983.4 +/- 0.9% iOS 6 

and the suburban types too.

4s ios5.1.1  2271.3ms +/- 1.7%

The map thing is stopping me updating to ios6.

10mins download (from normal phone-line BB), 8mins install including the time taken to update the carrier settings, and nothing gone AWOL.  Quite painless really, unlike the Symbian update on my wife's Nokia N8 earlier this year, which completely wiped her phone of everything: contacts, texts, call history, address book, downloaded apps, the lot.

4s ios6.0. 1801.7 +/- 0.6%

So the 'map thing' didn't stop you for long then...

No You know what it's like, the first place you look for is your own house and the imagery for here is shocking, but most other places are better and I have a Tom Tom for driving directions.

Stand by your beds...

Great review - very comprehensive!

I have recently transferred to the dark side with the samsung galaxy s3, that was a really good move from my perspective for all sorts of reasons, not least the disappointment that is iPhone 5 and ios 6.
GO ANDROID......

Any plans to transfer to the murky side (Windows 8 ) next? 

I wouldn't want to criticise your purchase of an s3 as it is a good phone, but all the bombastic bloggers who said yawn over the iPhone 5 are just starting to realise what a big step up it is.  It is impossibly tough considering how dainty it is, it has tied with the s3 on processor benchmarks even though it has two less cores and a lower clock speed, therefore more power efficient.  It crushes all android devices for not only GPU performance but java rendering speed.  It's just the typical media circle of hype and dump.  Of course, if you want a mahoosive screen there is not a lot to be done about that . I actually didn't expect it to be this powerful.

Just as once people go up from a 42-inch TV to a 50-inch one cannot go back to a 46-inch TV, it's not easy to go back to the iPhone once they buy the Galaxy S3, even though the iPhone 5 is slightly larger. Bigger screen is bound to be more attractive.

I actually bought an S3 a month ago. After using it for a couple of weeks I just thought it was too big and I wasn't overly keen on the the interface (maybe just touch wiz). Anyway I returned the phone and got the 5 yesterday. It's do much faster than the 4. My only gripe is iTunes Match. It's taking far too long to download songs. I started downloading a playlist of 600 songs last night at about 8pm and its still got 217 to go. I have a 60mb fibre connection!

anyone else have that issue?