Apple iPhone 5S vs iPhone 5C
In the smartphone world, there are few events that catch everyone’s attention. These events are glamorous in nature and tend to involve a lot of marketing before the event in order to create a huge anticipation. This is known to be a technique that boosts the demand for new signature products. Apple started this culture with their iPhone, and now Samsung also continue in the same track. Few other smartphone manufacturers also follow the same path although their events are not as big as these. So when we say we anticipate the events from Samsung and Apple mostly, that isn’t an overstatement. Hence after much hype and rumors and excitement, Apple introduced their new iPhone 5S in a glamorous event yesterday. If you’ve ever seen an Apple introduction event, you would know that they speak very less about raw performance specs and talks more about usability specs. For instance, without conveying the type and speed of the processor, they usually emphasize the speedup compared to the original iPhone which in this case is a 40x bump. This is more of a marketing stunt compared to the popular belief that it is to make things easy for the layman to understand. For an example, when you say it’s 40x faster than the original Apple iPhone, that feels like a huge bump, but actually it’s compared to an iPhone that came out in mid 2000s; this would make a lot of sense. However, Apple has done something they’ve never done before. This, in turn, signifies the pressure Apple has from its rivals to excel in the market at the top. Apple has released a budget friendly smartphone simultaneously with the premium iPhone 5S. This edition is known as Apple iPhone 5C, and we decided to take a closer look at it.
Apple iPhone 5S Review
Apple iPhone 5S seems to be in agreement with the rumors that were flying around about it before its release. The main point of attraction in Apple iPhone 5S is the Touch ID which is its fingerprint reader. When you place your finger on the home button, it is said to scan your sub-epidermal layers that has a resolution of 500 points per inch and reads your fingerprint. This fingerprint identification, in turn, can be used to unlock your phone, authenticate app purchases etc. Apple has ensured that the fingerprint data is only kept locally and not sent to any outside server or iCloud which is a really good indication about privacy. When talking about the Touch ID, you’ll immediately notice that new Apple iPhone 5S has a circular home button compared to the square home button that it had in the previous generations. It has a capacitive ring around it which activates with the fingerprint scanner. In terms of usability, the Touch ID feature can be used at any orientation of the smartphone, and it also allows you to store multiple fingerprints so that multiple members can use your phone without having to enter the passcode.
Apple has announced that iPhone 5S will come with a new 64 bit A7 chip, and Apple claims that it’s the first 64 bit smartphone processor which may well be true. They also claim that their built-in apps are 64 bit optimized, as well. The graphics performance using OpenGL ES 3.0 has seen a bump of 56x while the CPU performance has seen a bump of 40x compared to the original Apple iPhone. A new M7 motion co-processor is also introduced with Apple iPhone 5S which has the sole task of measuring your motions using a series of data points gathered through accelerometer, gyroscope and compass. It looks a lot like the motion core in Moto X, and Apple emphasizes that this is there to help health and fitness apps. When looking at the exterior, Apple iPhone 5S is a lot more like Apple iPhone 5 and looks even more premium and elegantly built. It comes in three colors; Gold, Silver and Space Grey and Gold one certainly adds to the glamour of the device. It seems to have the same resolution as the iPhone 5 which might not be a point of improvement, but then Apple is hell bent on providing a consistent user experience and faithful Apple fans will be happy that the resolution was kept the same.
Apple iPhone 5S comes with Apple iOS 7 which definitely seemed a lot smoother and a lot colorful than the previous version. Other than that, we couldn’t see much difference at the moment, and we are expecting an in-depth review after the release of the device. The camera has gotten a boost hardware wise as well as software wise. The lens has f2.2 aperture and has a 15% larger sensor; which means, at the same 8MP, each pixel will have more space to let more light in. There is also a two tone flash included, which has a blue cool tone LED and an amber warm tone LED, to provide a better white balance. It can also take 720p videos at 120 frames per second, which is essentially a slow motion video mode and I guess that will be famous among people doing Vines. Apple iPhone 5S comes with 4G LTE connectivity, and Apple claims that it supports 13 LTE bands to facilitate the global reach of the device. Apple hasn’t included support for Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, but the support for other protocols are included. The battery power seems to be consistent at 10 hours browsing using LTE, 10 hours talk time using 3G and 250 hours of standby which is good as gold.
Apple iPhone 5C Review
Apple iPhone 5C or the budget-friendly iPhone was one of the worst kept rumors in the World Wide Web and apparently it feels good in your hand albeit its plasticky feeling. According to Apple, iPhone 5C is a replica of iPhone 5 with a polycarbonate back plate that comes in different flashy color combinations. It comes in green, blue, white, pink, and yellow colors spreading through the hard coated polycarbonate back plate. Apple has been gracious enough to include the same 4 inch retina display featuring a resolution of 1136 x 640 pixels at a pixel density of 326 ppi as the iPhone 5. In fact, when we say it was a replica of iPhone 5 without the premium back plate, that should cover everything we have to say about iPhone 5C. However for the sake of being clear, we’ll include more trivial information about Apple iPhone 5C.
Apple has added support for 13 LTE bands in Apple iPhone 5C in order to maximize the penetration of the device. This device is more aimed towards the budget markets although it is not so cheap standing at $99 with 2 year contract. If sold without the contract, it stands at $739 which is very steep for what Apple calls a budget friendly smartphone. In fact, if we compare it against Apple iPhone 5, it is only $60 cheaper which easily compensates with the aesthetics and the premium look it offers. So what we are actually looking at is the most expensive budget smartphone ever, and we really can’t expect anything less from Apple either. In addition, Apple has made this a good excuse to bump the price of the iPhone 5S up to $869 which is really steep. Apple iPhone 5C is supposed to be released in US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the UK on the 20th of September 2013.
Coming to the trivial facts, Apple iPhone 5C has the same A6 dual core processor as iPhone 5 at the same hardware configurations. It seems to run Apple iOS 7 smoothly, which is to be expected because iOS 7 is to be released for iPhone 5, as well. The rear camera is still at 8MP although the front Facetime camera has been updated to HD. iPhone 5C comes in either 16GB or 32GB models without the ability to expand the storage using microSD cards. Apple iPhone 5C also uses the Nano SIM which was used in Apple iPhone 5. It is slightly longer, wider and thicker than Apple iPhone 5 though. Its weight has also increased at 132g. The battery seem to have received an upgrade because Apple has changed the standby time and talk time on 3G to 250 hours and 10 hours respectively.
Conclusion
It is still too early to conclude which smartphone is better without concrete facts and benchmarks; however, that is a no-brainer and, at the same time, because Apple iPhone 5S being the predecessor of Apple iPhone 5 and Apple iPhone 5C having the same hardware as Apple iPhone 5, we can clearly determine Apple iPhone 5S should be better. The real question is, however, whether to buy Apple iPhone 5C over Apple iPhone 5 because the price difference is only $60 when bought without a contract. So we would like you to think on that line and make your decision when you go and purchase one of these devices on the 20th of September.