iPhone
5s/5c review: Is Apple still "magical"? Apple announced not one but
two new iPhones this year in a market awash with larger-screened Androids and
Windows Phones. In 2013, is Apple's view of what makes a premium smartphone
still magical?
iPhone 5s
The
iPhone 5s doesn't represent a radical design departure for Apple, unless you
consider a gold iPhone, or the removal of that little square in the middle of
the home button to be radical design shifts.
I've
been testing with the gold version for a week now, and I'm somewhat surprised
with how much it has grown on me; while the early leaked shots suggested an
orgy of gold that would only suit the aspiring 50 Cent wannabe, the end result
is rather more refined looking. Still, a lot of what made last year's iPhone 5
stand out is still the case here; it weighs the same, has the same resolution
screen and same storage arrangements to boot.
It's a
little hard to separate an iPhone from its operating system, and the iPhone 5s
is the first phone Apple has offered (alongside the sibling iPhone 5c) to run
iOS 7 natively; users with older handsets could always opt to stay on iOS 6 or
earlier, but if you buy an iPhone 5s, you're stuck with Sir Jony Ive's
particularly bright vision of a modern operating system. There's a learning
curve here even for old hands at iOS, but for the most part it's stable and
fast, and, as always, built around the app ecosystem that remains a core
strength of Apple's smartphone offerings.
Apple
has beefed up the camera it offers for iPhones in the 5s, but not by pushing up
the megapixel count. Instead, what you get is an 8 megapixel sensor, but each
individual pixel is a little larger at 1.5 microns. It's the same philosophy
that HTC used with the HTC One, although its "Ultrapixels" measure in
at two microns.
The end
results are pretty impressive; the iPhone 5s can continuously shoot stills at
full resolution and a rapid rate, manages well at low-light shooting and can
pull off some neat tricks with 120fps 720p video to boot. It's not quite at the
lofty heights of the Lumia 1020 and its 41-megapixel sensor, but then the Lumia
1020 can't boast iOS' ecosystem - or the iPhone 5s' fast shooting abilities
either.
There is
also some future-looking technology within the iPhone 5s that's basically impossible
to assess at this point in time. The A7 chip that runs the iPhone 5s is 64-bit
capable, but there's precious little 64-bit code out there just yet.
The M7
"Motion Processor" should allow for fitness apps to track users in
the way that bands such as the Jawbone Up or Nike Fuelband do right now, but
right now it's more or less there, rather than being functional.
The
fingerprint sensor in the iPhone 5s is surprisingly fun to use, although again
it's limited to simply unlocking the phone and authenticating iTunes purchases;
opening it up for third party app developers to use doesn't appear to be on
Apple's agenda. Biometrics like this are hardly "new" in the business
world - there's no shortage of laptops with fingerprint sensors - but in the more
consumer-centric smartphone world, Apple's sensibly gone for an ease of use
approach to get people used to the technology before adding complexity.
There
was a time when folks would have been lining up for more than a week now to get
a new iPhone, but that doesn't seem to have happened this time around, as the
halo has dimmed somewhat and many solid competitor products are available for
smartphone buyers.
Where
does that leave the iPhone 5s? It depends where you come to it from. If you're
happy in the iOS ecosystem it's a very solid upgrade for everyone except iPhone
5 buyers, but then that's always been the case with the previous year's model;
the sensible time to upgrade should be every two years, not every twelve
months.
If
you're happy in Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry enclaves there's really
one key thing the iPhone 5s offers that other platforms genuinely struggle
with, and that's small form factor and power. You can get small Android/WP8
devices, but they're all underpowered; if you want cutting edge you're getting
a larger-screened device such as the Galaxy Note 3. Those who want a smaller
device will find the iPhone 5s to be an excellent choice.
iPhone
5c
Alongside
the premium iPhone 5s, Apple also launched the iPhone 5c, its polycarbonate and
highly-colourful line of ever-so-slightly-cheaper iPhones based primarily
around the hardware found in the iPhone 5. I was going to type
"existing" iPhone 5, but the theatre where Apple held its launch
hadn't even finished clearing before Apple pulled the iPhone 5 from its own
sales channels. If you want an iPhone 5, you'll need to find one still on store
shelves, and rather quickly at that.
As I've
been testing the iPhone 5c, I've been struggling with one basic question, and
it's this: Who is the iPhone 5c for?
Apple
was widely rumoured to be bringing a "cheap" iPhone to market, and it
didn't, but then it never said it would. What we've got instead is a
marginally-cheaper iPhone that's rather well built - like the other iPhones
that came before it, in other words - and comes in a variety of colours. The
physical build is fine, the colours will appeal to some and appall others, and
iOS runs acceptably well on it, as it should. Testing it felt like testing the
iPhone 5, and that's already a very well known quantity. Apple states that the
battery in the iPhone 5c is improved over that of the iPhone 5, but in my own
tests they run pretty much neck and neck for most of the time.
It is
essentially just an iPhone 5 in a pretty new hat. The iPhone 5 was a fine
premium smartphone in 2012, but in 2013, that makes it (at best) an upper
mid-range phone. Apple hasn't priced it that way, putting $130 (if purchased
outright) between the price of the 5c and the 5s. The performance and feature
gulf, once you take the better camera, fingerprint sensor, motion sensor and
faster processor into account isn't trivial, but it is quite trivial to get a
colourful iPhone 5 case - most I've tested with fit just fine - and pop it onto
an iPhone 5s. Hey presto, it's an iPhone 5c, only quite a bit better.
So who's going to buy it? I'm honestly not sure outside of the
heavy fashion crowd who, for one reason or another might just want colour and
not actual features. When it was announced and outright pricing emerged, the
only glimmer of hope was that telcos would take it on board in a
heavily-subsidised fashion, making it a better value pick, but that hasn't
really happened at all in Australia. We're still better off on contract than in
the US - an interesting reversal of
the outright purchase price -
but carriers are less inclined to subsidise handsets in such a
heavily-competitive space, which means that the iPhone 5c, like many other
handsets, isn't available in any kind of budget space.
Maybe
I'll be proved wrong, and a market will emerge that loves the iPhone 5c and
buys it in droves. Undeniably, that's what Apple would be hoping for, although
at the time of writing it's the first Apple product I can think of that hasn't
sold out on pre-order; as I write this Apple is citing delivery availability if
pre-ordered for every colour of iPhone 5c on Friday, which is precisely when
both the 5c and 5s (which you can't pre-order) go on sale.
So is
Apple still "magical"? I'm not entirely convinced it ever was, but in
offering two different iPhones to market at once, it is offering more choice,
even though the choice between two premium models, where one is markedly better
than the other, is one that's astonishingly easy to make.
Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2013/09/18/3851155.htm