It’s that time of year again and Apple’s in the usual record-breaking mood at the box-office. This is an S year in the Cupertino calendar but different enough – it may be that two phones instead of one account for almost double last year’s record sales. We can only guess as to which one contributed how, but this is hardly the point. We have the latest flagship reporting for duty and it will be both the main course and the desert, considering the 5c didn’t quite impress as an appetizer.
As with every “S” version of the iPhone the changes are subtle but not illusory. There’s no new design obviously, no bigger screen or a bump in resolution – nothing to go against the conservative grain of how Apple typically delivers iPhone upgrades every other year. That said, it’s not this phone’s fault that the iPhone 5 wasn’t the full-digit upgrade everyone was hoping for.
As usual with Apple – we need to give it that – a certain set of users just can’t wait to get the next big thing. Others, though, won’t just get rid of the iPhone 5 unless the newcomer is convincing enough. An iPhone may fail to meet the (usually over-inflated) expectations but it has never been a product to be displeased with.
The new OS version may be a decider as well, if more people share our experience and feel the slowdown on an iPhone 5 running iOS 7, but the rest of the new stuff may as well be just enough to tip the scales in favor of the iPhone 5s.
The first thing that makes a tangible difference is Touch ID, with a fingerprint scanner having made the iconic Home button its residence. The camera has a bigger sensor and dual LED flash, and gladly takes advantage of what’s probably the most notable improvement – the 64-bit A7 chip. The iOS enters its 64-bit stage in its seventh iteration, well ahead of the competition. What this means is better memory management and more complex tasks and apps ahead. This could as well be the first step to bringing the iOS closer to Apple’s dedicated desktop OS X – an early message that both platforms are due for a rendezvous eventually.
Key features
- Quad-band GSM and quad-band or penta-band 3G support with 21 Mbps HSDPA, 42 Mbps DC-HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- LTE support on all models and CDMA support when sold by CDMA carriers
- 4″ 16M-color LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 1136px resolution, 326 ppi
- Corning Gorilla Glass, fingerprint-resistant coating
- 1.3 GHz dual-core ARMv8 64-bit CPU, PowerVR G6430 GPU, 1GB of RAM, Apple A7 SoC
- iOS 7 and iCloud integration
- 8 MP autofocus camera, 1/3” sensor size, 1.5µm pixel size, True Tone dual-LED flash, touch focus, digital image stabilization
- 1080p video recording at 30fps, 720p@120fps slow motion videos
- 1.2MP secondary front-facing camera, 720p video recording
- Touch ID fingerprint scanner embedded into home button
- Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
- GPS with A-GPS connectivity, GLONASS support; digital compass
- 16/32/64GB storage options
- Accelerometer, proximity sensor and a three-axis gyro sensor
- Active noise cancellation with a dedicated secondary microphone, dedicated third microphone for Siri
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack, stereo Bluetooth v4.0
- Apple Maps with free voice-guided navigation in 50-odd countries
- iTunes Radio
- AirDrop file transfer
- Voice recognition, Siri virtual assistant
- Supports HD Voice (needs carrier support too)
- FaceTime video calls over Wi-Fi and cellular
- Impressively slim and light
Main disadvantages
- Screen feels small by 2013 standards
- Very expensive without carrier subsidies
- TouchID is greatly underused
- No USB Mass Storage mode, iTunes required for data transfer
- No FM radio
- No expandable storage, sealed-in battery
- No NFC connectivity
- 1080p@30fps video recording is low by current flagship status
- Mono audio recording in videos
The iPhone 5s pushes the major re-design another year back – but this is something we can live with. After all, the styling of the iPhone is still relevant – to say the least. Digging a little deeper reveals that Apple has taken good care of bringing many major facets of performance to a new level on its latest flagship. The processor, the camera, Touch ID, video recording and still imagery, low light performance, and naturally, the look and feel of iOS 7.The iPhone 5s at HQ however many things are still annoying about the iPhone – many, if not all, repeating themselves years on end. We like the premium compact and lightweight body of the iPhone but perhaps Apple is running out of excuses in terms of screen size and resolution. And that’s what makes the next point even more agonizing – the price. Apple tax or not, the iPhone 5s is more expensive than any of the competition’s flagships, and by a good margin too. The bottom line is Apple is charging more and delivering less: a smaller screen, lower resolution, less storage. Oh well. Who can blame them if they can get away with it? Scratch that – make an art of it.
Anyway, an iPhone has always been more than the sum of its specs. But we’re going to do the math anyway. Starting with the hardware, which may look similar but not without some noteworthy changes. Let’s go.
iPhone 5s retail package
The iPhone 5s comes in a retail box that’s exactly the same as the iPhone 5′s from last year in terms of size and shape. Our Space Grey unit came in a white box, whereas last year’s Black model came in a matching-color packaging.
The box contents haven’t changed either – you get the Apple lightning USB cable, an A/C adapter, EarPods headset with volume controls and microphone in their separate box and the SIM tray eject tool. There are a bunch of leaflets and, for the first time since the iPhone 4, Apple has thrown in two stickers.
Apple iPhone 5s 360-degree spin
The iPhone 5s has kept the exact same dimensions and weight as the iPhone 5. At 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6mm and 112 g, it’s probably the most compact premium smartphones in the market. Just not sure this is the compliment it appears to be, considering what kind of screen size and resolution qualifies as premium these days.Four inches of screen diagonal is what the iPhone 5 also has, the build and finish being the same too. Obviously there was room for the new processor, bigger battery and camera sensor, along with the new fingerprint scanner, in the old iPhone body.
Design and handling
The design of the iPhone 5s, like with every S version in the iPhone lineup, hasn’t changed dramatically. And we’ll say it again – it doesn’t need to. The most prominent change are the color options – the White Silver option is the only one that looks identical to the iPhone 5 – the Black of old is now Space Grey, which is a much lighter hue, which contrasts nicely with the dark strips top and bottom. And, there’s the brand new Gold option.The True Tone flash, which is essentially a dual LED flash, and the home button doubling as a fingerprint scanner are the only other differences over last year’s flagship.
Apple prides itself on the immaculate build of its flagship iPhone and this year’s model is simply the next installment in the premium category. Every detail has been carefully considered and crafted so as to deliver the impressive 112g of weight. The front is entirely covered in Corning Gorilla Glass, with cutouts for the earpiece and home button only. The sapphire crystal and stainless steel-framed Touch ID button looks very subtle on the iPhone 5s face, contributing to an almost uniform glass surface.Two black strips of glass frame the aluminum plate around back. The aluminum is matte and feels grippy enough. It proudly features the iconic logo and the iPhone inscription, in contrasting mirror-glass surface.
The iPhone 5s
What the iPhone 5s is missing, compared to the iPhone 5 is a black paint job.
Compared with the iPhone 5 and 5c
Handling the iPhone 5s is a pleasure, which is hardly any news. It’s built to the highest standards and has a premium feel that few can even hope of matching. The screen size is the only thing that out of line with current trend.Handling the iPhone 5s
There a numbered few smartphones in the market that come close to the iPhone 5s in terms of build quality and finish. The HTC One comes to mind with its curvaceous, yet uncompromisingly cool aluminum back. Sony’s Xperia Z1 has the steel frame to compliment the front and rear glass panels but it feels huge compared to Apple’s latest gadget.Controls
Most of the front is taken up by the 4″ Retina display, with the resolution of 640 x 1136 pixels breaking down to 326ppi. It’s a LED-backlit IPS LCD, but more on that in the dedicated display chapter.
Under the screen sits the good old, but actually brand new, Home button with Touch ID. The fingerprint scanner is essentially a CMOS sensor, which takes pictures of your fingerprint in 500ppi, processed by the A7 chip. Underneath is the familiar home button. A double press will launch the task switcher, while a press and hold will fire up Siri.
Above the screen sit the usual earpiece and a new iSight camera. Inside the earpiece Apple has placed a dedicated third microphone, which is used in voice recognition. The front-facing camera features a BSI sensor and larger pixels, but is still stuck on 1280 x 960 stills and 720p video recording.Above and under the screen
The Touch ID sensor is covered with a capacitive layer under the sapphire crystal, which meets your finger. The button is encircled by a stainless steel frame accent that matches the phone’s color option – in this case black to go with the surrounding glass surface.Touch ID
On the left you get the usual three buttons: volume up, volume down and a Mute toggle. The latter is rather stiff, which makes is pretty hard to operate with one hand, even though it’s located in a way to comfortably fall under your finger. Then again, probably that was required to prevent accidental pushes, which can potentially result in missed calls.
On the right you find the tray, which pops open to reveal the nanoSIM slot. The fact that you need a pin to operate it is hardly ideal, though, particularly if you need to exchange SIM cards on the go.The sides of the iPhone 5s
The top of the iPhone 5s hosts nothing but the power/lock button – no fancy IR blasters for remote control of various appliances here.The power button
The bottom features the lightning port in the center, the 3.5 mm headphone jack to the left along with the main microphone and single speaker nestled under micro-drilled holes that form two grilles. Apple is using its familiar proprietary screws here so you’ll need to get the appropriate pentalobe screwdriver to undo them if you’re into to repairing your device at home.
The lightning cable that comes with the iPhone 5s (iPhone 5, 5c, 4th-gen iPad and the iPad mini) features an authentication chip so don’t go thinking you’d be able to buy just any third party replacement cheaper and use it for backing up or syncing your iPhone 5s – it’s not guaranteed to work.
The lightning end of the cable can be inserted either face up or down into the iPhone 5s, which is a nice touch.The lightning connector at the bottom
Finally we come to the back of the iPhone 5s. The most notable change, visually at least, is the dual LED flash. It features one white and one amber-colored LED, which in combination should favor more natural skin tones when shooting with a flash.
Then there’s the new iSight camera. It has seen a sensor increase of about 15% – 1/3″ up from 1/3.2″ – without affecting the resolution. It’s 8MP, just as before, but the pixel size has been increased from 1.4 µm to 1.5µm, meaning in theory each pixel will gather in more light due to its larger size.The new flash and camera on the back
To help increase the light intake Apple has also increased the aperture from f/2.4 to f/2.2, while sticking with a 5 element lens.
Display
Apple decided that the 4″ Retina from last year is still good enough by 2013 standards. The screen is an IPS LED-backlit LCD with a resolution of 640 x 1136 and 326ppi.Apple are using the same display two years in a row, and it will sure want us to take it as a statement, a refusal to give in to the screen size craze. It may have a point as far as screen resolution goes. The iPhone 5s has more than enough of it for this kind of size. But 4 inches of diagonal doesn’t quite cut it anymore, not in the premium segment, where power users and heavy multimedia consumers shop.And we’re not saying that Apple needs to cross the 5″ barrier but are pointing instead to manufacturers like Motorola, which managed to squeeze a 4.7″ screen in a device that’s not significantly taller or wider than an iPhone 5s.
At least some of the space above and below the screen seems wasted. The LG G2, in comparison, has side bezels half the size, while the top and bottom of the 5.2″ device are still slimmer. We are not talking proportions either – the iPhone is lagging in terms of absolute values and that takes away a bit of the premium feel.
The display
The display matrix of the iPhone 5s is exactly the same as the one on the iPhone 5 and 5c. There are red, green and blue pixels in a straight line and equal size. Here goes the matrix.
The iPhone 5s Apple iPhone 5The differences between an iPhone 5s and an iPhone 5 are almost non-existent in the screen department. The black levels are pretty much on par. The brightness seems a little lower on the iPhone 5s and the same goes for contrast but the differences are almost imperceptible to a naked eye and could be a result of some tweaks in the iOS 7 software, compared to iOS 6.
For all purposes practical the iPhone 5s screen can be considered identical to that of the iPhone 5.
| Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
| Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Contrast ratio | Black, cd/m2 | White, cd/m2 | Contrast ratio | |
| Nokia Lumia 1020 | 0 | 172 | ∞ | 0 | 398 | ∞ |
| Nokia Lumia 920 | - | - | - | 0.48 | 513 | 1065 |
| HTC One | 0.13 | 205 | 1580 | 0.42 | 647 | 1541 |
| Samsung Galaxy S4 | 0 | 201 | ∞ | 0 | 404 | ∞ |
| Apple iPhone 5s | 0.14 | 163 | 1145 | 0.49 | 596 | 1219 |
| Apple iPhone 5 | 0.13 | 200 | 1490 | 0.48 | 640 | 1320 |
Battery life
The battery inside the iPhone 5s is of slightly higher capacity, in view of the new 64-bit A7 processor. Last year’s iPhone 5 went with 1440mAh, whereas this year we find a 1560mAh unit inside the iPhone 5s.
We’re be still digging into the iPhone 5s’ real-life battery performance but Apple promises the same exact numbers as last year – 250 hours of stand-by, 10 hours talk time on 3G, 8 hours of browsing on 3G and 10 hours on LTE and Wi-Fi. We’ll update this page with the results when our test completes.
Apple iPhone 5s and iOS 7: a match made in heaven
The Apple iPhone 5s runs buttery smooth with iOS 7, a major overhaul to the user interface with brand-new flat looks, transparent menus and keyboard, new system icons and apps, new control center and much more.Before we continue, here is a quick video demonstration of the new iOS 7 running on the iPhone 5s:
iOS 7 looks a lot different compared to its predecessors, but its logic of operation is mostly the same. All of your apps are on the homescreen, folders are available and there is the familiar dock that can take up to four shortcuts.
Apple iOS 7
All system icons are different though: the clock now has an animated icon showing the current time, the system fonts have been altered, and there are lots of semi-transparent elements and new gestures.
Let’s start from the beginning – the lockscreen. It’s totally different and yet it works in a very similar way. The slide to unlock bar is now gone and you can swipe anywhere on the screen to unlock your iPhone 5s. The text is somewhat illogically placed right above the tiny arrow for the control center which points up, but you actually still need to slide to the right to access the homescreen. The swipe might’ve worked both ways, left too, but that’s not the case.There are three different unlock methods for you to choose from. One that is unique to the iPhone 5s is TouchID (more on that in a minute), but there’s also the classic 4-digit passcode. If that’s too insecure for your taste, you can also opt for a custom passcode. This will bring you a text field where you can enter a virtually limitless security combination.
The lockscreen The lockscreen also has the camera shortcut at the bottom, you can swipe up from there for quick access to the camera app. A double press of the Home key will bring up the multimedia controls as usual. Lockscreen notifications are available as well.
The lockscreen works as before
You can notice two transparent arrows at the top and the bottom of the lockscreen. Swiping from the top down will display Notifications, while swiping up from the bottom will bring up the new Control Center.
Notifications and Control Centers are available on the lockscreenSwiping the lockscreen out of the way reveals the revamped homescreen.
The Spotlight pane is now gone – but not lost. It’s just triggered by a new pull- down gesture anywhere on the homescreen.
Folders
The Spotlight is now hidden but has a dedicated gesture
Folders are available as usual, but there is no limit any more to how many apps you can put inside them. Pages are available in the folders, each page can pack up to nine apps and there is no limit on the page count. And you can finally put the Newsstand app away in a folder! Hallelujah!An iOS 7 folder
The opening and closing of folders is now accompanied by a cool animation. These take a bit too long, though, and might become irritating once you are past their initial “wow” phase. Another cool bit involves the folder icons and the folders themselves being semi-transparent and their backgrounds adapt to the prevailing theme color.You may have already noticed the semi-transparent dock, folders, keyboard and Control Center in the screenshots. The Notification and Control Center colors are also adaptive, just like the folders, and they’ll change depending on the background. So they might be blue-ish on the homescreen, but light gray in the web browser, or dark gray in the settings, or green in the gallery, etc.
keyboard
The iOS 7 keyboardDictation is also available courtesy of Siri. Just hit the dictation button to the left of the space bar and fire away. Keep in mind that the performance may suffer in noisy environments.
The changes don’t end with those transparent and adaptive visuals. Opening an app involves a zoom in animation over the app icon, which is pretty cool.
The parallax effect is observable throughout iOS 7. Apple designed the new iOS on independent layers – background, homescreen icons, icon badges, and then app pop-ups. The iPhone then uses its accelerometer and gyroscope to move layers independently and create an illusion of depth. The movement is very subtle. In fact, you might not even notice it if you are not looking for it, but it’s there and it looks awesome once you start moving your device.The parallax effect is not only available on the homescreen. You can see it in folders and in the pop ups that ask you for passwords or display notifications. Those pop ups by the way are also translucent and adapt their background color.
A system pop-up
In case you don’t like the parallax effect you can turn it off from the Accessibility settings.
Apple iOS 7 brings live wallpapers. You can find them in the relevant section of the Wallpaper Settings. Currently there are seven live wallpapers but there is no wallpaper section available in the App Store. It seems we’ll have to rely on Apple for adding more.
Wallpaper settings • Dynamic wallpapers • Still wallpapersYou might have noticed in all these screenshots that Apple has ditched the cellular coverage bars and replaced them with five dots. The battery also got a new icon.
Control Center
The semi-transparent Control Center and Notification Center in different colors
The keyboard is less transparent and has only two themes – very light or very dark gray. Of course, they also change depending on whether your keyboard has popped up on top of a light or a dark background. Beside the new theme and font, the iOS keyboard is unchanged, which is not a bad thing as it’s certainly one of the most comfortable around. Three out of five dots for signal strength and the new battery icon
Apple decided not to follow the competition and put the connectivity toggles in the notification area. They’re in a brand new Control Center instead, that’s pulled up with a swipe from the bottom of the screen.The Control Center
It has five non-customizable rows for various shortcuts. The top row has five toggles – Airplane, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, DND mode and Rotation Lock. The second row has the brightness slider. Next come the media player controls including a volume bar. The fourth row has AirDrop and AirPlay shortcuts. Finally, at the bottom of the Control Center there are four shortcuts – one that turns on/off the LED flash to serve as a flashlight and three app shortcuts – Clock, Calculator and Camera.The volume slider is perhaps a bit redundant but nothing in the Control Center is customizable. It’s a great, albeit well overdue, addition.
The Notification Center
The Notification Center has been redesigned as well. It now has three tabs – Today, All and Missed. The Today tab has the date, a summary of all events for the day, calendar day view, reminders, stocks and tomorrow’s summary. As usual, you can choose which apps you want to show up in the pull-down Notifications and in what order.Today tab • Settings
The Today tab is customizable, and you can disable its elements one by one – everything but the date displayed at the top can be removed so it doesn’t get in the way. You can even disable the Today tab altogether in the Notification Center for the lockscreen.
The All tab is basically the notification center from iOS 6 but sans the weather, stocks and calendar events. The first two are now part of the Today tab, while the weather is gone for good. You can disable the All tab for the lockscreen as well (just turn off Notifications View). If both Notifications (All) and Today tabs are disabled, the entire Notification Center will no longer be available on the lockscreen.
The All tab • The Missed tab
The Missed tab displays new emails, messages and missed calls you received while your iPhone 5s was locked. Those notifications are still available in the All tab.
Other than that, the handling of notifications hasn’t changed a bit. You can opt to disable a notification, set it to be a banner, which will shortly pop up over the status bar or an alert showing up at the center of the screen.There are also options to disable badges on app icons or disable lockscreen notifications.
Notifications
As before, you can interact with notifications straight on the lockscreen. If a notification has just arrived, sliding to unlock will open up the relevant app – upon a missed call, you’ll go straight to the phone app. You can also swipe a notification to perform a task – swipe to call back or text.Lockscreen notifications
The banner notification is very subtle. If you receive a text in the middle of something, it will briefly pop up over the status bar and disappear in a couple of seconds, and not distract from what you’re doing.Homescreen notifications
Do Not Disturb is, as expected, still an integral part of iOS 7. It gives users further control of notifications, or rather their suppression. If turned on, it will mute incoming calls or alerts. You can allow calls from your favorite contacts and have the option to set a specific timinterval in which you won’t get any notifications.
Do Not Disturb mode settings
There’s a dedicated toggle to activate the DND feature and it can be customized in the Notifications submenu. When Do Not Disturb is on, a crescent icon appears next to the clock in the status bar.According to Apple, iOS 7 offers multi-tasking for all apps. Previously true multi-tasking was reserved only for navigation or music streaming apps, the rest had t go in suspend mode.
Now, this multi-tasking for all apps will surely drain the battery faster than Apple would have liked, so there is a catch. Yes, all apps will work in the background, but iOS will learn which one of them you use most often and when.
Let’s say you open the Facebook app every morning and don’t use it for the rest of the day. iOS will soon learn that and will optimize the app to work according to your schedule until you change it. This means most of the day and night the app will still be in suspend mode (push notifications will work of course), but iOS will run Facebook shortly before your alarm goes on and load all the content. That way when you open it, your news feed will be already updated.
We noticed that apps also update in the background when push notifications come in. This is a part of what Apple calls opportunistic updates – the iPhone waits until a data connection is available and starts the updates then, so it doesn’t need to activate the connection on another occasion and waste your battery.
We haven’t spent enough time with iOS to give a proper judgment on how well the new multitasking works, but once we do we’ll duly update this section.
Background App refresh
The task-switcher interface is invoked with a double tap on the Home key. It looks a lot like the webOS cards of old and, more recently, the HTC Sense Task switcher – all apps are presented with cards that you can swipe up to close. Each card has the respective app icon so you can easily recognize what’s what.Multitasking in action
The multitasking UI works in both portrait and landscape mode, but you cannot see more than three cards at a time. It’s one of the limitations of the card interface and we suspect this is why HTC went for a different task switcher with the One, but here’s hoping that Apple will at least fix the landscape mode down the line.
The iOS 7 Settings menu has the same layout as in previous versions but updated with the new flat and borderless look.
Besides the Background App Refresh, iOS 7 offers even better control over the apps that use mobile data. The Cellular tab offers detailed cellular data breakdown by apps and services, allowing you to properly manage your resources.
Cellular/Wi-Fi connection
All apps that use Cellular/Wi-Fi connection and can work in the background are listed under Settings -> General -> Background App refresh.Settings • Cellular Data settings
Another thing worth mentioning is the Vimeo and Flickr integration in addition to Twitter and Facebook. Once you enter your account details in the settings you can upload your photos straight to your Flickr gallery, while your videos will go to your Vimeo. You just need to hit the share key on a picture or a video and use the dedicated Flickr/Vimeo icon.Sharing on Flickr and Vimeo
The last major change about the user interface is the Back gesture available in all iOS 7 default apps (maybe developers will be able to extend the support to third-party apps after launch). Whether you are in settings, App Store, Messages, Notes, Reminders, Safari, etc. a swipe from the left side of the screen will take you one step back.
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