Apple unveils iPhone 5s & iPhone 5c

James Delahunty
10 Sep 2013 14:35

Apple has unveiled its new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c smartphones, catering to the high-end and low cost smartphone markets.
The iPhone 5s is available in gold, silver and grey, designed with high-grade aluminium with cut chamfered edges. As widely speculated before today, the new iPhone 5s supports fingerprint authentication through Touch ID. It uses a laser cut sapphire crystal, together with the capacitive touch sensor, to take a high-resolution image of your fingerprint and intelligently analyze it to provide accurate readings from any angle. It is built right into the Home button.

All fingerprint information is encrypted and stored securely in the Secure Enclave inside the A7 chip on the iPhone 5s; it's never stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud
The iPhone 5s is powered by the new 64-bit A7 chip, which provides processing and graphics performance twice as fast as the A6, according to Apple. The upcoming iOS 7 comes with native 64-bit kernel, libraries, and drivers, with Xcode support and backwards compatibility.

The iPhone 5s also includes the new M7 motion coprocessor that gathers data from the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass to offload work from the A7 for improved power efficiency. The new CoreMotion APIs will let developers exploit the advantages of the M7.

The iPhone 5s has a new 8 megapixel iSight camera with a 15 percent larger active sensor area (f/2.2 aperture). These improvements, along with the Apple-designed image signal processor in the A7 chip and the new Camera app in iOS 7, provide up to two-times faster auto-focus, faster photo capture, automatic image and video stabilization, and better dynamic range.

The new True Tone flash variably adjusts color and intensity for over 1,000 combinations, so photos taken with a flash appear more natural. iPhone 5s also includes a new Burst Mode, Slo-Mo video with 120 fps, a new FaceTime HD camera for better low-light performance and audio-only FaceTime calls with iOS 7.

As for the battery life, Apple estimates 250 hours standby on a charge, or 10 hours 3G talk time, 10 hours LTE browsing time or 40 hours of music playback.

Now for the most important information of all, how much an iPhone 5S costs and when it will be available. With a two year contact, the iPhone 5S is available with 16GB storage for $199, 32GB of storage for $299 and 64GB of storage for $399. It will be available from September 20 from stores.

iPhone 5c

Apple also unveiled the iPhone 5c, a low-cost iPhone set to compete with budget Android smartphones.

The iPhone 5c - available in White, Blue, Pink, Yellow and Green - features a 4-inch retina display with full sRGB, powered by an A6. The front of the smartphone is one multitouch surface, while the sides and back are comprised of a single part. It is made with hard-coated polycarbonate, though reinforced with a steel structure.

It features an 8MP iSight camera with a 5-element lens, and a new Facetime HD camera. It supports dual-band Wi-Fi (802.11abgn) and Bluetooth 4.0.

The iPhone 5C be available from September 20, priced at $99 for 16GB and $199 for 32GB.

Apple also announced today that iOS 7 will be available from September 18, free for iPhone 4 or newer, iPad 2 or newer, iPad mini and the fifth generation iPod Touch.