Gadgetory

the iPhone 5s is a refresh of the iPhone 5 but is it enough to keep up with what the competition is going to come out with over the next 12 months hey guys it's Brandon Minnemann from pocket now this is our full review of the iPhone 5s let's get to it last year we sang the praises of the iPhone 5 it's hardware speed camera and fantastic one-handed usability led us to highly recommend the phone this year Apple is keeping a lot the same while improving upon several key areas where the iPhone 5 has now fallen behind in the face of competition there are three areas where the 5s is different than the 5 and actually the 5c one the a7 64-bit chip 2 a camera with improved low-light performance and some new shooting modes and three a fingerprint security scanner but in actuality there are other areas in which the 5s is better than the 5 and 5c and we'll cover those in the test notes section of this review let's start off talking about hardware you know it's a 5s because the home button has a metallic border that matches the color of the body of the phone the metal border stands out the most on the gold or silver versions as the Space Gray has a black ring around the home button that is difficult to see unless you're looking for it we tested both a Space Gray and silver version of the 5s the Space Gray is a lot nicer than last year's black model because the metal is a lighter color that hides fingerprints better the silver color is the same as the previous white model in the new 5s the home button is actually flat which is very similar in feel to the curved concave button that we've come to expect from other iPhone models flipping over to the back we can see that the typeface of the word iPhone is a little less bold than last year perhaps in a nod to iOS 7's new thinner typography at the top we can see the new dual tone flash along with the larger camera sensor the display is the same 11 36 by 64 IPS panel used in the iPhone 5 and 5c it's a really good screen with excellent brightness color saturation and contrast but compared to 1080p screens that take sharpness to a whole new level the iPhones display starting to feel a bit dated that said the excellent one-handed usability is obviously still there the iPhone 5 had some terrible durability problems after just moderate use our iPhone 5 had numerous chips and scratches especially on the metal edges we're hoping that Apple has solved this issue with the 5s but only time will tell let's talk about some of the features unique to the 5s those of you that use a pin on your phone to unlock will love touch ID which is the name for Apple's fingerprint scanner in the home button setting up touch ID requires you to use a pin on your phone once you do that you can associate multiple fingers to your phone whether there are your own fingers or someone else's the setup process is quick and easy and in practice the phone recognizes your fingerprint in about a second making it almost as fast that's just sliding to unlock your phone which you won't need to do if you're using touch ID but there's a big downside to touch ID it's use is limited only to unlocking your device and for paying for purchases in the App Store even Apple's own apps like find my friends in the Apple Store cannot use touch ID but overall we can see Apple using touch ID in all of its future products we just hope that it's useful to be expanded one day with a developer API the iPhone 5s is powered by 64-bit multi-core a7 CPU with a gigabyte of RAM in practice this makes the 5s faster than the 5 but by about a beat meaning apps open a tad faster webpages load a bit more quickly and so on but as of the time of this video 0 apps have been updated that we can find that have been rewritten in 64-bit it's only a matter of time before that happens especially for games but we're not likely to see Facebook or Instagram upgraded anytime soon because those apps really can't take advantage of 64-bit architecture in their current form so we don't recommend that you buy a 5s because you think it's going to be much faster than a 5 or 5c because that's just not going to be the case along with the a7 CPU we get the m7 coprocessor which is designed to measure motion data in a separate low-power chip this means that fitness apps and apps that use the accelerometer gyroscope or compass will be more power efficient it will also do things like predict when you're inactive like sleeping and it will reduce network pinging helping to improve battery and then there's the camera the f 2.2 aperture lens let's in more light and the two-tone flash helps to avoid bright white photo shots and very low light where the flash fires the iPhone 5 was falling behind in low-light photography compared to devices like the HTC One and Lumia 1020 this the 5s is new camera fix the problem it helps but it's not a huge leap the 8 megapixel daytime photos come out about the same as the 5 but when there is limited light the 5s excels with far less noise present and shots taken without a flash take a look at these photos taken in dark situations with the 5 and then the 5s there's a clear difference especially when no flash is used however we're not sold on the true tone flash in our tests using the flash on the 5s resulted in slightly warmer photos but not to the degree of making or breaking a photo nighttime video also benefits from the larger lens as you can see here with decent visibility and limited noise the camera software has some neat improvements in the 5s first is burst shot which isn't new to smartphones but new to the iPhone you can hold down the shutter button on the 5s and take dozens and dozens of photos then the phone can try to guess which ones are the best or you can do it for yourself this is great for situations where there's a lot of motion then there is slow motion video which again isn't new to smartphones but new to the iPhone you can capture 120 frames per second video and then go back and choose which parts of the video be one in slow motion and which you want in regular and it's a fun tool to use we're not going to cover I oh s 7 because it's been out for a while than most people that are using iOS devices already have it on the 5s iOS 7 works great there's not much more we can say about that now for some test notes in terms of speaker output we found the v s/s speaker to be significantly louder and clearer than the 5 which is nice it's still not as loud as boom sound on the HTC one but it's actually a close second in terms of battery life the 5s has a battery that is 10 percent larger than the 5 does that lead to better battery yeah slightly the iPhone 5 under normal use could easily go about 12 hours without needing a charge under mixed use the iPhone 5s can go a bit longer under similar situations going for about 13 or 14 hours off the charger Apple is making a new case for the 5s after taking a break from making cases for the 5 it's made from a high-grade leather which we should add passes our smell test and you pay for it at 40 bucks of course there are many other less expensive cases you can buy for your 5s and cases for the 5 will indeed fit the 5s but the Apple made cases especially nice and it comes in a variety of colors now of course the iPhone 5s doesn't have a big screen with 1080p resolution nor does it have the unparalleled flexibility of Android but if you're buying an iPhone you have a different agenda you appreciate a fantastically well rounded phone that does many things well all while keeping one-handed usability in mind we give the iPhone 5s a 9 out of 10 so that's going to do it for our iPhone 5s coverage if you want to see our review of the iPhone 5c Michael Fischer did a great video and we'll put a link up here so you can jump back to that post about comparisons between the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5 the 5c and the 5 the 5 seen the 5s we've done it all and be sure to check out the full review on pocket now coming up on the 5s and the 5c is already up so check that out thanks for watching and we'll see you next time