The latest phone from Apple has been available in the Philippines for a while now, and I’ll be a hypocrite if I say that I was not tempted to get one from my telco. But after checking out the reviews from other respectable sites, I have decided that I should stick with my iPhone 4S a lot longer.

If you’re an Apple enthusiast like me and you don’t agree with what I just said, please don’t get me wrong. I love the new hardware design of the iPhone 5. The display, even if it was just a bit taller than its predecessor, is just gorgeous. I don’t have any accessories that utilises the 30-pin connector, so I don’t have anything to lose with a possible phone upgrade. So why am I holding up from upgrading? Here are my reasons.

1. Most of its selling points are iOS 6-centric. Maps, Facebook integration, and other stuffs are already available in my iPhone 4S. Most iPhone 4 users were irritated before that Siri was only available in iPhone 4S, which somehow invites them to upgrade even if the phone presents minimal improvements, and unfortunately (this is not the case for iPhone 5).
2. According to reviews, the current design gets easily damaged, even if was kept in a soft pocket in bag for two weeks. It was easily chipped with minimal key/coin contact. I went haywire when someone bumped to my watch and scratched it big time, so imagine how I would react if a coin just chipped my iPhone 5.
3. The hardware specifications of iPhone 5 might present itself as a faster unit than 4S, but so far I haven’t experienced any performance problems with my current phone. So I still can’t see the point why I would upgrade.

If my observation is correct, the best time to buy an iPhone is this year, which is supposedly an in-between release in Apple’s release cycle. They usually release minimal yet much-needed improvements a year after a major release and I am hoping that this would be the case this year. With this, I will save up some money for the upcoming release.