Apple iPhone 5

Phone 5 Basics and Call Quality

For the basics, read our in-depth Verizon Wireless iPhone 5 review. In short, the iPhone 5 is a beautifully built, fast and powerful smartphone with an unparalleled range of third-party apps. While many of its features are on par with other top smartphones, the terrific apps, games, and App Store experience are what really make this phone an Editors' Choice winner.Various controversies have cropped up since the iPhone 5 was released, but none of them change our overall opinion of the phone. For a summary, see our full iOS 6 review, and then our reports on the black models chipping, how the otherwise excellent camera can showpurple lens flare and Apple's apology for how bad its mapping app is. Only the last problem gives me pause; we suggest downloading a third-party mapping app if you intend to use this phone as a GPS. Fortunately, there are many available.

We got a white model for AT&T, and so we got to compare it with the black unit we received for Verizon. I'd recommend the white model. In a week's worth of testing, our black unit chipped slightly between the volume buttons, leaving a little silver divot. Scratches are considerably less visible on the white handset

Like the Verizon model, the AT&T iPhone is a very good voice phone. I actually got better call quality than on the Verizon model, with very sharp, very round voice tones and very good transmission quality. And the speakerphone was satisfyingly loud. A small amount of background noise came through on transmissions, but not enough to cause problems. The phone had similar RF signal performance to the AT&T Samsung Galaxy S III$189.99 at Amazon Wireless.

AT&T Performance

The AT&T iPhone has faster overall Internet performance than the Verizon model, when AT&T's network behaves. That's the key issue. All iPhone 5 models run on two networks each: a 3G system, and a 4G LTE system. When we tested AT&T's 3G on this iPhone, I got consistently faster results than when I tried Verizon's 3G on an iPhone 5.  

AT&T's speeds were highly variable and inconsistent, though, leading to an unpredictable experience. While Verizon's 3G speeds generally vary between 500Kbps and 1Mbps down, I got speeds from 1.25Mbps anywhere up to 7.6Mbps on AT&T's HSPA system in New York City. The network also dropped a call when I was doing the battery test. And when we tested AT&T's network in 30 cities earlier this year, we found its 3G system was up to 25 percent less reliable than Verizon's in terms of maintaining data connections. (See the chart at right for details.) That factor really varied by city, though. New York City was by far the worst city for AT&T reliability, and in many of our cities we didn't see a major difference between AT&T and Verizon reliability. For more details, see the city-by-city pages in our Fastest Mobile Networks feature.

None of these caveats apply to AT&T's excellent, super-speedy 4G LTE network—except that AT&T's LTE just isn't available nationwide yet. If you're trading up from an AT&T 3G phone and LTE is available in your city, you're in for a treat. AT&T's network showed download speeds from 7Mbps to 25.5Mbps when I tested it using three different speed test apps on an iPhone 5. In our Fastest Mobile Networks tests, we also found AT&T's LTE network to be much more reliable than its 3G network.

Phone 5 Basics and Call Quality

For the basics, read our in-depth Verizon Wireless iPhone 5 review. In short, the iPhone 5 is a beautifully built, fast and powerful smartphone with an unparalleled range of third-party apps. While many of its features are on par with other top smartphones, the terrific apps, games, and App Store experience are what really make this phone an Editors' Choice winner.Various controversies have cropped up since the iPhone 5 was released, but none of them change our overall opinion of the phone. For a summary, see our full iOS 6 review, and then our reports on the black models chipping, how the otherwise excellent camera can showpurple lens flare and Apple's apology for how bad its mapping app is. Only the last problem gives me pause; we suggest downloading a third-party mapping app if you intend to use this phone as a GPS. Fortunately, there are many available.

We got a white model for AT&T, and so we got to compare it with the black unit we received for Verizon. I'd recommend the white model. In a week's worth of testing, our black unit chipped slightly between the volume buttons, leaving a little silver divot. Scratches are considerably less visible on the white handset

What does this mean for standard apps like Web browsing? Our AT&T iPhone loaded a basket of Web pages in 21.4 seconds on LTE, and 71.5 seconds on 3G. Compare that to our Verizon test, which was 31 seconds on LTE and 127 seconds on 3G. AT&T's phone and network are faster, when they're working properly.

Some other AT&T iPhone 5 trivia: The phone takes about ten seconds longer than the Verizon model does to "trade up" from 3G to LTE when you end a call. And unlike on other AT&T LTE phones, you can turn off LTE with a simple switch if a weak LTE signal is killing your battery life. With a strong signal, though, the iPhone has very good battery life; I got 8 hours, 40 minutes of talk time in an area with solid 3G and LTE signals.

AT&T's iPhone roams on Canadian LTE networks, but it can't hit LTE in the rest of the world. That isn't too much of a hardship, though, if the countries you're going to have HSPA+ 42 networks, you'll get speedy connections that won't quite measure up to LTE, but they'll be fast enough for most people.

This model of the iPhone can also do simultaneous voice and data, unlike the Verizon and Sprint devices. When you're on a call, the iPhone drops back to AT&T's 3G network, and I got download speeds of 1-2Mbps while on a call—not super-speedy, but fine for downloading navigational data, for instance. This ability makes the AT&T iPhone 5 a much better choice than Verizon's for use as an in-car GPS.