iPhone 5S Launch on Sept. 20; Battery Life and Speed Receive Good Grades
During Apple's launch event on Sept. 10 in Cupertino, Calif., the tech company announced the release of the iPhone 5S, one of the two new iPhones. Speed and camera function are some of the qualities Apple claims to have improved with this latest release, which will be available Sept. 20.
The iPhone 5S is "the most forward-thinking phone we've ever created," Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said during the conference.
The 5S will be available in silver, black and gold and is made of high-grade aluminum featuring chamfered edges.
The phone's biggest appeal is its improved speed.
The core of the iPhone 5s is its 64-bit A7 processor. This processor has over a billion transistors, which is twice the number of transistors in the iPhone 5, which contains an A6 processor. The phone's CPU and GPU means that the iPhone 5S will also be twice as fast as its predecessor.
Another exciting feature of the iPhone 5S is its M7 motion co-processor, which monitors data that comes in via motion in real-time. The M7 uses the phone's gyroscope, compass and accelerometer to do so. As a result, the iPhone 5S should work better with health apps like the new Nike+ Move app, for example.
The iPhone 5S also features a touch ID fingerprint sensor, a feature that was speculated about for weeks before the launch event. The sensor is built into the phone's home button. It reads fingerprints in any direction and also reads subdermal fingerprint layers. iPhone 5s users will be able to use their fingerprint to unlock their phone, instead of entering a four-digit lock code, and to make purchases on iTunes, instead of entering an Apple ID password.
Apple said that fingerprint data will not be stored on Apple's servers, and that prints are encrypted and locked in the phone's A7 chip. Apple also says that prints are not accessible directly by software.
The iPhone 5S' camera is improved over the iPhone 5 with a lower f-number, which means better pictures. The iPhone 5 has an f-number of 2.4, while the iPhone 5S has an f-number of 2.2. The camera also features auto image stabilization, which will allow users to take a lot of pictures at once. The phone then combines the clearest parts of each picture into one. Burst Mode has been added to the phone, which allows photographers to take 10 frames per second. The new SloMo camera app gives users the ability to shoot videos at 120 frames per second at 720p.
The iPhone 5S is available with a two-year mobile contract at $199 for 16GB of memory, $299 for 32 GB and $399 for 64 GB.