Apple did a terrible job keeping anything about the iPhone 5 secret. The big 5-shaped shadow on the event invitation all but confirmed its "iPhone 5" moniker, and that was the last item on the checklist--at the September 12 unveiling event, Tim Cook and his colleagues stood on stage and ticked off, one by one, the things we already knew. Larger screen, check. New connector, check. LTE networking, check. Really thin, really light--of course, what else were you expecting?

So while the specs weren't shocking, if you paid even cursory attention to the pre-event rumors, actually picking up the iPhone 5 is still a wow moment, simply for how thin and light the phone is, and how the new, taller screen seems to fit just fine.

The iPhone 5's lighter weight is noticeable from the second you pick it up. Apple eliminated the glass back, which is half the glass on an iPhone 4 and 4S, and you can really tell. iPhone 5 is only 3.95 ounces, just 112 grams. That's 20 percent lighter than the iPhone 4S, even as the iPhone 5 has a bigger screen. The iPhone 5 is thinner, too--just 7.6mm (0.30 inch) thick, or 18 percent thinner than iPhone 4S.

The iPhone 5 sits side-by-side with the iPhone 4S.

The width didn't change--the iPhone 5 is 2.31 inches across, with a screen width of 640 pixels. But the 4-inch diagonal screen is taller, with a new resolution of 1136x640 pixels, or 176 pixels taller. That gives it a perfect 16:9 widescreen ratio; we checked out scenes from The Avengers in the Videos app, and every single pixel on the screen was used up by the video—no letterboxing.

Of course, every iPhone app in the store was written for a 4:3 screen (the 960x640 Retina displays or the 480x320 older screens), so developers will have to either update their apps to use the extra vertical pixels. iPhone 5 will automatically letterbox any 960x640-sized apps, centering the app's interface on the screen and adding black bars above and below.

We tested this with Algoriddim's djay, and it worked fine--on the black iPhone's dark face, the black bars are barely visible. And having the extra screen real estate for optimized apps (Apple's are all updated, of course) is nice. Our thumbs could still comfortably reach every corner of the screen, and you get an extra row of icons on each Home screen to boot—although we kept having to stop and count to be sure it was an extra row, because after a few minutes with the iPhone 5, it's easy to forget the screen is taller at all. Reaching your thumb up a little bit becomes second nature.

The aluminum back has a handsome matte texture with polished ridges around the outer edges. We couldn't test the improved speaker or how the three included microphones help with voice dictation and Siri--the demo room was simply too loud. And we obviously couldn't test Apple's claim of 8 hours of talk time and  10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, or get a full measure of the LTE speeds without vigorous real-world use, but we plan to fill in those blanks in our review in the next issue.

Its thinness is not a lie.

One of the ways Apple kept the iPhone 5 so thin is by replacing the 30-pin dock connector with a new Lightning connector. They didn't promise Thunderbolt speeds, and the new Lightning-to-USB cable is USB 2, not 3. But it's symmetrical, so you can plug it in either way. This seems like a small change, but it's incredibly smart, especially for those of us who seem to plug our old cables in wrong every single time. Of course, you won't be able to use older cables and docks without Apple's $29 adapter. No wonder all the speakers we've been seeing lately use Bluetooth instead.

Apple improves the camera on each iPhone, and the iPhone 5's is another big step forward. We tried the built-in panorama feature, and it couldn't be easier to use--you keep the phone in portrait mode, a white line on the screen helps you keep the phone level as you pan to the right, and you'll see a warning if you start to move too quickly. A 28-megapixel panorama is saved in the Camera Roll almost instantly--the results are impressive.

We were a little surprised the megapixels didn't increase--the front "iSight" camera is 8 megapixels, just like iPhone 4S--but Apple promised improved low-light performance and improved image stabilization when recording video. Oh, and you can also capture still photos while recording video, a feature we think parents will especially love. The camera on the front takes better pictures (1.2 megapixels, up from VGA resolution) and 720p video, too.  

Do all these add up to a must-upgrade situation? Not really. If you love panoramas, the App Store is full of apps like 3D Panorama by Occipital (99 cents, universal) that work just great. If you watch a lot of widescreen video, you'll love the absence of those black bars. LTE networking is great (our iPad is typically faster on 4G LTE than on Wi-Fi), but eats up data plans faster than ever too. And as much as we agree it's time for a new connector, Lightning is still proprietary to Apple, so some users may prefer to give the iPhone ecosystem some time to adjust. We'll have a full review in the next issue, but for now, the iPhone 5 is a great phone, just not a mind-blowing leap forward.