- It’s been almost a year (11 months to be exact) that I’ve been using my iPhone 5 and ever since the newer iPhone 5S came out, quite naturally I couldn’t wait to own it. Finally that happened, and I couldn’t be happier (well, until the iPhone 6 comes around).
The iPhone 5s is available in 3 color variants: White, Space Gray and Gold. I made pretty sure that if I were to buy this phone, it would have to be the gold one.
iPhone 5S True Tone LED Flash
(note: Screen Guard placed front and back)
SPECIFICATIONS
Network: 2G, 3G, LTE
Display: 4” LED Capacitive Touchscreen (home button with fingerprint sensor)
Connections: Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, USB 2.0
Camera: 8 MP autofocus rear camera with dual LED True Tone flash, 1.2 MP front-facing camera
OS: iOS 7 upgradeable to iOS 7.0.4
Built-in Memory: Non-expandable 16GB/32GB/64GB with 1GB RAM DDR3
Processor: 1.3GHz dual-core Apple A7 chip (64-bit)
Battery: Li-Ion 1560 mAh
PHYSICAL
Blame my overzealousness, but I was kinda disappointed with the “goldness” of the gold iPhone 5s. It’s more like champagne gold, rather than gold gold. It looks better in lighted conditions, but other than that, I’m miffed. Moving on, it’s easy to notice the new camera flash on the iPhone 5S. The new dual LED True Tone flash brings great improvements in taking night stills with flash (explained in the camera tests below). The metallic ring that surrounded the camera in the iPhone 5 is now gone in the iPhone 5s. Although, on the white and gold iPhones, the home button is surrounded by a similar, non-metallic ring and the ubiquitous square icon has disappeared.
Volume keys and the Silent toggle switch.
iPhone 5S flat home button inside the circular gold metal.
CAMERA
The iPhone 5S camera sports the same 8-megapixel resolution but a different, faster, and better optics make up for that. I use the camera mainly for my heavy social network usage, so anything higher than 8MP wouldn’t make any remarkable difference. Shooting in low-light situations without using the flash still produced grainy images (no surprises there). The dual LED True Tone flash, however, provides just enough lighting when used, and creates images with better lighting and color balance minus the typical washed out appearance that discourages users from using flash. When you tap the shutter icon or the physical shutter keys (+- volume keys) the phone fires the flash during night stills and adjusts focus on the subject before it takes a photo, which is absent in all previous models of iPhones (although it takes quite a bit for the camera to shoot but it doesn’t matter as long as it takes good photos using flash).
iPhone 5S Rear Camera with True Tone LED Flash
(note: Screen Guard placed front and back)
The video capability of the new iPhone 5S is still the same as the iPhone 5, 30 frames per second (FPS) 1080p video stills and save for the new Slow-Mo (slow motion) video feature that records 720p up to 120fps.
Sample photos:
Me and my mountaineering friends during our Christmas Party
Me and Anne during Carte Blanche 2013
OPERATING SYSTEM & OTHER SOFTWARE
Comparatively, the latest iOS 7.0.4 runs perfectly smooth in the new iPhone 5S than previous models. Multitasking, entering folders, and exiting apps are snappy most especially when motion reduction is turned on (found in settings > general > accessibility). Facetime Audio is a little bit buggy when loudspeaker is on and turns off the display when something is near the proximity sensor. On the other hand, this never happens when making normal calls on loudspeaker.
Safari has been redesigned. The 8-tabbed browsing is now disabled. The menu and toolbars automatically hide when the site is fully loaded and when you start scrolling. I also like the back settings when you swipe from the leftmost part of the screen going to other side.
BATTERY BACK-UP
The iPhone 5s’ 1560 mAh non-removable Li-Ion battery offers a small improvement over the iPhone 5’s 1440mAh battery. During web browsing and using other apps that require a data connection, the phone lasts just 3-6 straight hours with full brightness and Globe’s unlimited LTE connection. With the LTE speed that Globe delivers (in my location I can have up to 26.88 mbps download speed and 12.94mpbs upload speed) I don’t have to wait for sites to fully load on Safari (in a few seconds, BOOM there it goes). Uploading photos in Instagram is almost instantaneous and I no longer have to wait a minute for my photo to be uploaded. So I think a short battery life in a shortened usage of phone with data makes it a bit more bearable.
FINAL WORDS
If you’re an Apple fan, it’s high time that you owned the iPhone 5s. Based solely on its merits, I think anyone, fan or not, who can afford an extra buck would be very happy with this luxurious piece of machinery.