As expected, Apple's just announced the iPhone 5s, its latest flagship
smartphone. It runs iOS 7, and looks almost exactly like the iPhone 5
but comes in different colors: silver, a new "space gray," and gold — as was heavily rumored. The standout feature is Touch ID,
which is an integrated fingerprint sensor in the new sapphire home
button that scans your "sub-epidermal layers" at 500 points per inch to
read your fingerprint and unlock the phone. You can also authenticate
purchases, so buying apps, music, and movies in iTunes and the App Store
just got a lot easier. There's a capacitive ring around the home button
that activates the sensor, and it can read your fingerprint in any
orientation. You can also have it authenticate multiple fingerprints, so
you can share your phone with specific family members without having to
reveal your passcode.
Importantly, fingerprints are encrypted and stored locally on the A7
chip in the phone itself — Apple says fingerprints aren't available to
apps, nor are they sent to any servers or shared with iCloud.
The smartphone vendor also released US pricing during the event.
The iPhone 5C will retail for $99 (Rs. 6,299) for 16GB variant, whereas
you can pick 32GB version at $199 (Rs. 12,663). Apple is yet to clear
its stand on selling unlocked version of iPhone 5C globally. It'll go on sale
September 20th, and Apple says the 5s will reach 100 countries and over
270 carriers by December. To help with that international expansion, the
company has built in support for 13 LTE bands, which it claims is the
highest number found in any smartphone.
As for internals, the iPhone 5s has a new A7 chip,
which Apple says is the first 64-bit chip in a smartphone; iOS 7 and
the built-in apps are all 64-bit optimized. That all adds up to what
Apple claims is up to a 40x bump in CPU speed and a 56x bump in graphics
performance (compared to the original iPhone), as well as support for
OpenGL ES 3.0. Apple demoed Infinity Blade 3, which looked pretty
astounding.
The 5s also has a new M7 "motion co-processor,"
which continuously measures motion data from the accelerometer,
gyroscope, and compass — it's there to enable "a new generation of
health and fitness apps." It works with a new CoreMotion API in iOS 7
that identifies user motion. It sounds a lot like the dedicated motion
core in the new Moto X.
The camera has been improved
with a new Apple-designed lens with an f/2.2 aperture and a sensor
that's 15 percent larger — it's still 8 megapixels, but each pixel is
bigger to let in more light. The camera software in iOS 7 is optimized
for the newer sensor and does an automatic series of adjustments to
white balance, exposure, the tone map, and autofocus to take the best
photo — and it take multiple photos and picks the best one for you.
There's also a "true tone" dual LED flash, with one cool blue LED and
one warm amber LED so the flash matches the color balance of the light
in the room.
There's yet more with the
camera: it can take 10fps burst mode photos as long as you hold the
shutter, it has a 120fps 720p slow-motion video mode, and it does
automatic motion reduction by analyzing multiple frames when you take a
single shot. It can also take 28-megapixel panoramas, adjusting exposure
automatically as you pan.
Battery life is also improved,
with up to 250 hours of standby, 10 hours of browsing on LTE, and 10
hours of talk on 3G. One area that hasn't seen an upgrade is Wi-Fi, with
Apple opting not to add 802.11ac networking in the iPhone 5s.
The 5s has been leaking out in
one form or another for weeks now, so it doesn't come as much of a
surprise.
