Gadgetory

well this is David with the verge and this is the iPhone 5s this is Apple's flagship phone but it's the mid cycle version like the 4s and 3GS before it this device comes with a bunch of changes in improvements but no huge design refresh on the plus side at least this year unlike with the 4s people will know you bought a new phone yes the 5s is the same brushed aluminum shell and chamfered edges as ever as light and thin and comfortable in one hand as ever I do wish there were an option with a slightly bigger screen but overall it's still hard to beat the design and construction of the iPhone 5s but it has new color options which give it a great new look there's silver the same color you can get on the 5 but now there's also Space Gray a slightly lighter version of last year's model that I actually like better and then there's gold the surprising new entrant looks great the only other design changes on the front of the 5s where Apple has redesigned the home button you'll press countless times every day now there's a ring around the button that matches the color of your phone it's designed so that the iPhone 5s can read your fingerprint which enables easily the most innovative feature on the 5s touch ID basically touch ID replaces your itunes password and your device PIN requiring only that you tap on the button with your finger it'll recognize up to five different fingers so you and your family can all use your phone and it's virtually instantaneous it can be finicky at first while it gets to know all the different ways and angles you might touch the phone to turn it on but it pretty quickly starts to work perfectly as long as you really do put your finger on there the 5s runs on Apple's new a7 processor which comes with the m7 coprocessor the m7 takes inputs from the compass accelerometer and other sensors and together they let the phone tell when you're driving or when the phone's idle or when you get out of the car and start walking the a7 itself is kind of the same story it's good now but there's really nothing to do with all the power it offers Iowa 7 works great on the device even smoother and faster than on the iPhone 5 but it's not a massive difference all our benchmarks and tests though say it's remarkably faster and I think the problem is that we're just not seeing there are many apps that make use of its power or its 64-bit architecture yet the big question with the 5s is whether or not you should upgrade from the iPhone 5 if you have a 4s or earlier of course you should upgrade but if you have a 5 and you care about taking pictures you probably showed as well the 8 megapixel camera on the iPhone 5s is fantastic it's the same megapixel count as the iPhone 5 but the average faster and more importantly the sensor is bigger which means individual pixels capture more light that makes the iPhone 5s a much better camera when lighting is bad the a7 processor also lets you use image stabilization in your photos zoom in and out wider shooting videos and best of all shoot slow motion video it shoots at 120 frames per second at 720p then plays back at 30 frames per second giving you an awesome run from normal speed to slow motion and back again the processor also makes for better photos just because it's able to shoot so many more of them the phone captures 10 frames per second and if you ask it to it will automatically choose the best one for you though I wound up just picking myself a lot regardless using burst mode is really easy and a great failsafe if you want to make sure you always get the right shot so is the true tone flash but I almost never use that it uses two different colored flashes to light your subject better and match the scene around you and it's definitely better than most flashes but it's still a lot worse than just not using a flash battery was the one slight disappointment in the 5s upgrade that's not to say it's bad it's not it's not even worse it's just not meaningfully better than the iPhone 5 you'll get a full day as long as you don't use it constantly but nothing more the iPhone 5s starts at $199 for 16 gigabytes of storage and it's the best iPhone ever but of course it is there are plenty of cool features here but Apple and developers both need to work to get the most out of the a7 the m7 and even from your fingerprint and for those still wanting a bigger screen there are plenty of alternatives like the HTC One and the Moto X that the 5s doesn't exactly leave in the dust I like the iPhone 5s a lot and it's still probably the best overall smartphone on the market but the best may still be yet to come Oh