Apple says the iPhone 5's screen has the deepest colour saturation of all its products - side by side with its predecessor, the iPhone 5 definitely wins in terms of colour vibrancy and brightness.

The iPhone 5 is also Apple's first phone with a 16:9 aspect ratio, which means you can finally take advantage of the Retina screen to watch HD video.

When taking video or photos the camera stabilisation feature helps reduce some (but not all) of the shake that comes with using smartphone cameras.

Unfortunately a mysterious purple haze appears in any photos with bright lights towards the edges, which has ruined several photos during my review period. The iPhone 4S had a similar problem, but it was much fainter than with this new device. It's unclear whether it's a fixable software problem, or an issue with the sapphire camera lens or the camera's sensor.

The iPhone 5 sports a dual-core 1.2 Ghz processor, and a separate graphics chip. I wasn't able to pick up any performance improvements with the new A6 processor, and system animations and apps ran with the same level of smoothness as with my iPhone 4S.