Apple Announces Two iPhones: The iPhone 5s and 5c

Today is the day, Internet. Apple has unleashed their marketing power upon the world, and drummed up more excitement than seemingly possible over something so insignificant as a new phone. Not to be outsmarted by their clever marketing, I'm now going to create a detailed post talking about all the crazy new features of their new phones, and why they're awesome.

Way to go against the system Logan. You go girl.

The iPhone 5s
Fingerprint scanner, better camera, faster. Starts at $200, ships September 20
The iPhone 5S was the "normal" update for the day. It has the same basic design as the iPhone 5, but with some pretty major internal upgrades.

First of all there's the new color scheme. There are three options for the first time ever, "silver" (which for some reason is the black one), gold, and "space gray" (it's basically white).

The 5s looks really high end, especially in shots like these. The gold color definitely adds a since of "royalty" to the line, even though its a bit ugly in my humble opinion.

The one big, awesome, futuristic feature is a fingerprint scanner built right into the home button on the phone. You can use the scanner to unlock the phone, and to authorize the purchase of apps, movies, and books. You can also register multiple fingerprints, so more than one person will be able to access the phone.
This, unlike features like Siri, is a thing that I can see a lot of people using all the time.

The camera on the 5s is dramatically improved, even though the camera on the 5 was already one of the best in the business.
The Verge breaks it down:

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.

So yeah, the camera is pretty powerful.

Inside, the 5s is running Apple's new A7 processor, the first 64-bit processor in a phone. That's the same sort of processor that runs your computer. Phones are officially computers now people.
The processor is 40x faster than the original iPhone, and can run 56x better graphics. Infinity Blade III will be the first game optimized for the processor, and it's going to be insane.

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. There wasn't much talk about what that means for consumers, but eventually it could lead to some pretty awesome experiences.

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 iPhone 5s will start at $199 for the 16GB model on a two-year contract, with 32GB for $299 and 64GB for $399. It'll go on sale September 20th, with online preorders set to start September 13th.

The iPhone 5s

The iPhone 5c
Cheaper, plastic, and colors. Starts at $99, ships September 20

The iPhone 5c was the more interesting half of the announcement. Instead of following their normal pattern of reducing the price of the last-gen iPhone (the 5) to $99, Apple has opted instead to create a new phone for that price mark.

The 5c is basically the internals of the iPhone 5 with a colorful new shell. It has the A6 processor still, and lacks the improved camera and fingerprint scanner.

This marks the first time the iPhone has been available in multiple colors, and they did a surprisingly good idea at making it look good. I always assumed colors would look bad on an iPhone because colors are fun, and the iPhone has never really had a "fun" design.

The iPhone 5c costs $99 on contract for the 16GB model, and $199 for 32GB, and ships alongside the 5s on September 20.


Apple also announced they will sell rubbery cases for both the 5c (see below) and the 5s, as well as a $29 dock for each.