Got a chance to check out the iPhone 5 thanks to my lovely wife upgrading her iPhone 4 and impressions are strangely mixed.

The phone itself is a marvelous device on first glance. The new screen is impressive and the phone itself is scarily light. It really does feel like a great evolution of the product line.

But after a week, signs are the battery isn’t up to keeping that nice screen running for long. Impressions are that it is at least a couple of hours worse than my wife’s old phone. That’s something she was able to notice quickly so it doesn’t bode well. It’s also a common complaint amongst other new owners.

As for software, iOS6 is meant to be the latest and greatest but from our impressions it is more a case of what’s missing.

YouTube and Google Maps were two of the most used apps on her phone and guess what’s been changed or removed? Issues with Apple Maps aside, it mostly fills the void but lack of a native YouTube app is tragic. Using the web version can suffice but it is certainly not the same… I had to use the web version on my Windows Phone for ages until a suitable 3rd party app (MetroTube) was developed.

It almost seems that Apple has reached that point in the smartphone arms race where their old technology advantages are no more. Or maybe now that there are a lot of viable alternatives, Apple can no longer expect to wow people with something neat.

Having Tim Cook apologize for Apple Maps and then recommend alternatives including one from its old rival Microsoft shows how quickly situations can change. And that the once invincible can stumble.