If by any stroke of bad luck you missed the Apple event, we have a small run down of the most important things you should know that you missed. ( How could you? )
Apple held an event yesterday in which they announced the future of iPhone. Almost every other rumor which was discussed profusely by everyone came true. Almost everything. As expected Apple launched the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S which will be available on September 20. But don’t be disappointed that all the rumors came true, as always Apple did some changes to the iPhone line up and launched it with some bells and whistles. So strap on ( I mean like a seat/chair belt ) and read along.
iPhone 5C
iPhone 5C is the new face of budget iPhones. It’s basically the last year’s successful line of iPhones ( iPhone 5 ) just instead of an aluminum and glass built quality, it is now wrapped in plastic body. Technically it’s a hard polycarbonate case but Apple decided to call it ‘unapologetic plastic’. It comes in five colors White, Pink, Yellow, Blue and Green.
If you forgot what the iPhone 5 had inside here are the tech specs ( nothing new )
Processor : A6 chip
Display : 4-inch Retina Display. 1136×640 resolution at 336ppi
Camera : iSight 8 megapixels camera with a single LED flash. f/2.4 aperture. Records a 1080p HD video at 30fps
Front camera : 1.2 megapixel FaceTime camera. Takes 1280×960 photos and does 720p HD recording.
Battery life : Upto 250hours standby. Talktime upto 10hours on 3G
Capacity : 16GB and 32GB
Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic with its original plastic case is provided with the device.
Still has SIRI and the lightning Connector.
In the Box :
iPhone 5C with iOS7
Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic
Lightning to USB Cable
USB Power Adapter
Documentation
Price :
SIZE PRICE ( On 2-year contract ) PRICE ( Unlocked)
16GB $99 $549
32GB $199 $649
Apple is even selling cases for $29 for the iPhone 5, they come in various colors and the case has a back design with bunch of holes to show off your 5C color too. They looks funny but does the job and somehow are actually appealing, unlike most cases they don’t steal the show and despite having a case they show the true 5C color. Case manufacturers might not be that happy. You can buy the cases for $29 at the online Apple store too.
iPhone 5S
This is the exciting and the most awaited iPhone release of the year, the iPhone 5S. It looks almost identical to the older iPhone 5, it has the same build quality, almost the same design but comes in three different colors. Black ( Space Gray ), Silver and Gold. Yes it comes in Gold as it was seen in many leaks. But don’t let the looks deceive you, it has a lot of upgrades and really fast as Apple claims.
Let’s first start with the processor. The processor is the world’s first 64-bit cellphone processor. Its called the new A7 chip. This chip makes the device 40x faster and the graphic processor is 56x faster than the old iPhone. But that’s not it, the A7 chip is coupled with a M7 motion coprocessor which is a small new chip which is dedicated at monitoring and processing data from the device’s motion and location circuits. What it helps in? It helps in monitoring your activity and location in background at a battery cost of only one-sixth of what the main processor would require. Don’t worry all this monitoring is for the fitness apps, so that you don’t have to run the apps in background, instead whenever you turn on the fitness apps all the data monitored by the motion coprocessor would be updated in the app. ‘Nike+ Move’ would be the first of one of those apps which will take the help of this coprocessor to make their fitness app much more useful and less battery consuming. This sounds like a bad news to fitness gear like FitBit and Nike’s own Fuel.
The camera, iPhone 5S now has a redefined camera which has as f/2.2 lens. Because of this, the new camera lens would be better in low light. The sensor is now 15% bigger and a small chip means pixels are bigger, this too would drastically improve low light photos. But that doesn’t stop with the camera improvements. iPhone 5S has been fitted with a new dual LED flash. Unlike any other flash you have seen on camera phones or even standard cameras this dual LED flash has two LED flashes – white and amber.
When you take a photo with flash, there is an initial quick flash; which measures the color temperature of the scene. Then immediately there is a second flash, the real flash as the photo is clicked. This real flash has two LED’s firing in combinations of white and amber. The white flash is for making the white/bright flash and the amber flash is to make an amber/skin/dark flash which is to balance the room. This balance of light to the room will keep colors pure as they are. In combination, the white and amber can flash in 1,000 different color-temperature tones this Apple calls as the ‘Truetone’ flash. Photos clicked with such flashes would eliminate the ugly extra bright/white flash photos.
The camera app is now equipped with burst mode, you can now get 10 frames-per-second burst mode. So as long as you hold down the camera button to click photo it will keep taking photos with the speed of 10 photos per second.
The video camera of the iphone 5S too is very much improved; you can now shoot a slow motion video with the speed of 120-frames-per-second. All the camera features are well showing in the demo, they looks excellent.
Now everyone expected iPhone to have a better processor and a camera, so these weren’t the actual highlight feature to talk about. The real deal was iPhone 5S now has a fingerprint reader. Its called the ‘Touch ID’. Very intelligently and aesthetically its built inside the Home button, you don’t have to push hard or swipe your finger over it to make it read; all you need to do is just touch it to wake up the phone and unlock it. Apple says as much as you use it, it gets better as it reads your finger perfectly. The fingerprint reader can read your finger in any angle. From the settings App, you can teach the device to read all your finger and even fingers of your loved ones so they too can unlock it. The setup is quick and simple, it would ask you to tap the home button a few times in different angles to build a digital fingerprint of your finger in whorls, loops and arches.
You can use your fingerprint as a password to your iTunes account, so you can now purchase anything from the Apple store ( books, Apps, music, TV Shows, etc ) just by your fingerprint instead of entering your password. For now they aren’t allowing any third-party to access this to login other websites as passwords but Apple said they might add the feature later. For now it’s for unlocking your phone ( security ) and making Apple purchases ( password ).
As per the initial review by everyone, its fast, snappy and works great. No glitches or performance issues noticed.
Apple made it very clear, your fingerprint images are encrypted and stored on the phone’s chip and never ever transmitted to any external server, they cannot be accessed by any third-party app and they are never backed up on iCloud either.
So let’s go through the specs once.
Processor : A7 chip + M7 motion coprocessor
Display : 4-inch Retina Display. 1136×640 resolution at 326ppi
Camera : iSight 8 megapixels 1.5µ pixesl camera with a TrueTone flash (dual LED flash). f/2.2 aperture. Records a 1080p HD video at 30fps. And a 120fps slow motion view ( slo-mo video )
Front camera : 1.2 megapixel FaceTime camera. Takes 1280×960 photos and does 720p HD recording.
Battery life : Upto 250hours standby.Talktime upto 10hours on 3G
Capacity : 16GB and 32GB
Features Touch ID. A new fingerprint identity sensor.
Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic with its original plastic case is provided with the device.
Still has SIRI and the lightning Connector.
In the Box :
iPhone 5C with iOS7
Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic
Lightning to USB Cable
USB Power Adapter
Documentation
SIZE PRICE ( On 2-year contract ) PRICE ( Unlocked)
16GB $199 $649
32GB $299 $749
64GB $399 $849
For iPhone 5S too Apple is selling a premium case worth $39. You can buy them at the online Apple Store.
Free Apps From Apple
iWork for iCloud went in open beta last month. So basically everyone can use the iCloud iWork beta now, so they can open, edit, save and move office documents in iCloud easily. But still Apple has made all the office applications by them free for everyone who activate their devices after 1st September 2013. This means any new Apple device that is bought and activated after 1st September 2013 will get all the Apple iWork app from the iTunes store for free. These Apps are, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, iPhoto and iMovie.
iPhone Dock
For dock lovers, we also have a good news. The old Dock is back in the Apple store for $29
iPhone 5S Dock
iOS7
iOS7 will be officially released on September 18th. Here is the list of devices it is compatible with.