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Sure, it had LTE, but given that it was also the first phone I owned with data (that I would quickly blow through browsing Twitter on buses between classes), I didn’t really notice a jump in speed. Touch ID wouldn’t arrive until the iPhone 5S a year later, and the truly big screen sizes of modern iPhones wouldn’t come until the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus two years later.
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There wasn’t any big jump in processor, hardware design, or display density (as with the iPhone 4) or new software features like Siri (on the iPhone 4S). The iPhone 5 isn’t even that notable in the history of the iPhone, offering a marginally taller display from the 3.5-inch panel previous iPhone models had offered. Until then, I subsisted on carrier-subsidized Razr flip phones and inherited, indestructible Nokia candy bars. Not only was it my first iPhone, it was the first phone that I went out and voluntarily spent money on, period. I’ve owned a lot of iPhones in the last 10 years, but the iPhone 5 was the first.
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