Apple Unveils iPhone 5

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY -- September 12, 2012 at 12:45 PM EDT

Apple Unveils iPhone 5

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during today's Apple event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on September 12, 2012 in San Francisco, California. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

The newest iteration of the iPhone will be thinner, lighter, taller and with faster data speeds than previous versions, Apple executives said on Wednesday. The tech giant unveiled the iPhone 5 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Made entirely of glass and aluminum, the iPhone 5 has an 8-megapixel camera, faster Wi-Fi, a faster processing chip and a new dock connector, which means it won't be compatible with old accessories. It also features new mapping software with turn-by-turn voice navigation, a noise-canceling earpiece and three microphones instead of two.

It is 18 percent thinner than the iPhone 4S and 20 percent lighter and capable of working with 4G cellular networks. It will likely go on sale in a week or two, Associated Press reports.

You can watch a live reporting of the news from CNET here.

Gizmodo, Mashable, All Things D, CNET and Wired were among the sites live blogging the event.

You can watch Steve Jobs announcement of the original iPhone from the Macworld Conference & Expo 2007 here.

Mashable has more on that day in this post.

Leading up to today's announcement, the rumor mill was abuzz with questions about screen size and battery life, dock connecters and display technology.

An awful lot is riding on the new smartphone. JPMorgan chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli estimated iPhone 5 sales could boost fourth-quarter gross domestic product by $3.2 billion and add one-fourth to one-half of a percentage point to annualized GDP growth in the quarter, according to this report by the Los Angeles Times.

We'll have a discussion on the subject moderated by Jeffrey Brown on the NewsHour tonight.

Tweets about "#iphone5"

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