The trajectory of the iPhone is, in most ways, the trajectory of Apple over the past decade. Insane ambition, untouchable dominance, the inevitable slowing of momentum. And now, reinvention, sort of. Mostly from iOS 7, partly from the iPhone 5S itself. But underneath it all, itâs still just an iPhone. And thatâs still pretty good.
The smartphone race has reached a point where Apple can no longer pad its lead simply by staying entrenched with its existing productâcompetition has caught and in places passed it. And that, in turn, means the phone in your pocket will be evolving a little more rapidly than it has in the past. A new software design, fingerprint unlocking, broader motion sensing, even the continued evolution of Siriâthese are the sorts of leaps forward that Apple is usually content to let others test out before giving its own refined take. The result is a mixed bag.
Design
The iPhone 5S is literally just an iPhone 5, with a slightly different home button. It comes in gold now. If youâre somehow unfamiliar with the iPhone 5, here is all you really need to know: It is impossibly light, the display is smaller and more narrow than most popular Android phones, and it is chamfered to high heaven.
Using It
Hardware
Whatever else it is, the iPhone remains a gorgeous phone, one thatâs as satisfying to hold and use and look at as any piece of electronics has the capacity to be. Itâs thin, light, solid, regrettably scratch-prone, on the fragile side if not outright brittle, and all the other things you know iPhones to be. Thatâs a little boring, but it also works.
And so Apple plays the hits. The screen is the same retina display youâre used to. Itâs been outstripped in size and pixel density by other larger and more powerful phones, but youâd be hard pressed to point out any flaws. The size, weight, and general shape are all the same old Apple standards. We like them. Theyâre not going anywhere. In fact, if you want to find change here, youâre going to have to look inside.
TouchID, Appleâs fingerprint scanning security system, just works. Remember how that feels? Itâs simple and convenient and never feels like an imposition. Every time Iâm asked for the thumb ID, it feels like a shortcut. Oh, Iâd have to input a whole damn password here, wouldnât I? Itâs almost like MagSafe, in that it takes a small not-really-an-inconvenience and makes it easier, better. Wet fingersâafter just washing your hands and drying them on your pants, sayâdonât work so well, but we did find that eating chicken wings and having gross, orange fingers was just fine. So thereâs that.
Thereâs another piece of hardware in the iPhone that hasnât been talked about nearly as much, but is maybe even more important than TouchID. The M7 processor is supposed to make your iPhone come alive. At the announcement event, Nike showed off a new app that would turn your iPhone into, basically, a Fuel Band you carry around in your pocket. The phone would pick up the fine movements of your body, but because that information would be routed through the M7 chip instead of the main processor, the effects on battery would be minimal.
That functionality, from Nike and anyone else using the M7, isnât in use yet. We donât know how well it will work or how accurate it will be, but that it wasnât ready for launch isnât the best sign. These are natural growing pains, but they fold into a larger trend of Apple just not getting things right the first time around. Siri, Apple Maps, and now whateverâs going on here.
Itâs a shame that the battery-saving M7 hasnât really kicked in yet (or maybe a good thing, depending on how well it works), because the battery is crap. The 5S doesnât last as long as the Moto X or Galaxy S4, but the gap isnât huge. Itâs crap, mainly, because I think about battery every time I use it. With background updates off on non-essential apps, Iâd get to around 5 or 6PM before the phone was flat dead on moderate use. A little longer on light use, and far, far shorter when I was screwing with it constantly (obviously). But thatâs not good enough. Sure, you can use a battery pack to top off throughout the day if traveling, or charge throughout the day at your desk (if you work at a desk, yuppie). But the primary feature of your phone should always be its ability to turn on, and thatâs an area the iPhone lags behind its major competitors, and is lapped, twice, by brutes like the Razr Maxx.
https://gizmodo.com/battery-life-is-the-only-spec-that-matters-5992917
Thereâs a new processor here, too, an A7 chip doesnât really bear mentioning. Yes, itâs faster, in the way that processors tend to get faster from year to year. Itâs not a transformative feature, and the 64-bit jump isnât going to do you much good in the near future. You can read about some of the interesting things going on under the hood here, and down the road, the shift in course will prove crucial. But mostly, donât sweat it. The phoneâs fast. Thatâs all you really need to know.
https://gizmodo.com/what-apples-64-bit-architecture-really-means-for-your-i-1299910455
Camera
If the iPhone tracks the trajectory of Apple as a whole, the iPhone camera over the past few years has played that out in miniature. Beginning with the iPhone 4, the iPhoneâs camera has been the best, by reputation and often by reality. But over the past year, itâs been caught and surpassed by competitors like the Lumia 1020 and the HTC One. Itâs still perfectly goodâgreat, evenâfor a camera phone. But it hasnât been the best in a while.
https://gizmodo.com/iphone-5s-camera-battle-a-stand-up-camera-that-doesnt-1357856416
Nuts and bolts, the camera is fastâespecially if youâre used to the longer shutter times of a smartphone like a Lumia with optical image stabilizationâand takes sharp images. The tradeoff is that it doesnât do quite as well in low light. Its dual flash is a particular disappointment, since Apple played that up as a major improvement. Itâs not. It washes faces out like all the other LED flashes, and gets stomped by Nokia phones with Xenon flashes, like the Lumia 928 and 1020. Hereâs a small sample gallery of some shots from the phone. The colors are a little less saturated than weâre used to seeing from an iPhone.
While the controls on the new app arenât as granular as some camera nerds would like, theyâre plenty good for the rest of us; the HDR setting (âhigh dynamic rangeâ for shots with both bright and dark sections) being right at your fingertips is nice.
The âstandoutâ new camera feature is probably the 120fps slow motion video setting, which is pretty cool actually, but mostly a fun novelty. It works by just shooting a video as you normally would, on the slow motion setting. Then you open the video and slide the bars around to pick which portion of the video is in slow motion. It works! Pretty well, actually. Maybe youâll use it at dumb college parties or recording your kids play sports. But will you really?
Hereâs the thing: This is a great smartphone camera. But it still exists within the paradigm of smartphone cameras taking very good throwaway picsânot the ones you want shot to last. The Lumia 1020âs existance (I know the 808 PureView was out, but it wasnât viable for most people) changed that. The whole idea of how you use a camera in a phone is different now. Not being the very best isnât a crimeâitâs size constraints and less-than-superb processing hereâbut the next big jump has happened, and the iPhone isnât on board just yet.
Software
For the first time since before the App Store, really, iOS has room to grow. Maybe it wonât be as broad as Android or as lightweight as Windows Phone, but all the tools to make iOS as information-dense and functional as the other guys are hereâitâs just a matter of figuring out how to use them, in some cases. Still, despite the extreme makeover and new stuff bolted on, itâs the iOS you remember.
iOS 7 still feels more welcoming than Android, which is alive and efficient but never really easy. But beyond the talk about the icons (dreadful in spots, but you stop noticing itâshort praise but true) and flatness, the issues thing about the design that stands out after a week or so is the openness. That is, in place of traditional buttons, a lot of apps now just have some text. Done or Back, for example. The result is the whole OS feels less claustrophobic, but tapping buttons can be more hit and miss than youâre used to, maybe because devs arenât used to enlarging the touch target for iOS. Small issue, but itâs there.
https://gizmodo.com/ios-7-review-pretty-is-as-pretty-does-1327221981
Lots of features seem like they were barely thought through. Wasteful, stupid, but with room to turn into something truly good and useful. Letâs take the new Notification Center as an example. The information organization doesnât make any sense. It displays the day of the week and the date in large type, and then underneath, the temperature and weather forecast, written out. This is not useful. Why would you need to know the day of the week so immediately? Why not have temperature and an illustration of the weather most prominent, or the time, or your most pressing upcoming event?
The whole Calendar widget is similarly idiotic. If you have a schedule slammed with meetings, events, lunches, and dinner plans, every day, hey this is great. But when you donât, the widget stays on your Notification screen, empty, just taking up space for no reason. And notifications themselves are split into All and Missed subcategories, which are inscrutable enough that Iâm still not totally sure what the difference is.
These are part of a long list of small, frustrating things about the OS that will probably be sorted out eventually. But theyâre real enough for now, and raise two quick points. One, these are the misfit-toy problems that Android stared down for years, only without the broad customization offered by that platform. And two, for the first time in years, itâs a little exciting seeing what the jailbreakers will come up with.
If theyâre taking requests, the keyboard would be a good start. Itâs insane to not have any form of Swype text entry in 2013. It doesnât matter what it costs. Spare no expense. If you need to pay Swype a billion dollars and every last Baby Gap t-shirt in Jony Iveâs closet, by god, give it to them.
Siri, too, is still half-cooked. Appleâs sometimes-silly attempts to humanize the âdigital assistantâ are useful in more cases than youâd think, like being able to say âget me directions to thereâ on a map or restaurant page without worrying about just saying âdirectionsâ and being flung off to a default address entry field. And some of the customization is still niceâwho likes using their parentsâ full names?âbut overall, the inability to make fine corrections to how Siri pronounces and recognizes words and speech (which many competitors are doing) is a frustrating hangup. (Thereâs a new iOS 7 feature that lets you say âYouâre not pronouncing that correctly,â but if you canât even get her to say it in the first place, thatâs faint help.)
Like
The iPhone is still a beautiful phone, and iOS is more functional than ever. The redesign of the software makes it feel fresh, even though the phone looks more or less the same as last year. TouchID really works, and itâs a huge convenience.
No Like
The camera is good, but its flash is a disappointment. Battery life isnât good, especially compared to some of the behemoths out there. And in places, iOS 7 feels unfinished, or poorly thought out.
Test Notes
A further note on the A7 processor: I played a good bit of Sword and Sorcery, Badland, The Walking Dead, and Liberation, and got no slowdown at all, which is what youâd expect, but still good to know. In fact, the phone didnât stutter once while I used itânot during multitasking, not while running older, non-optimized apps, just not at allâwhich you canât say about some other standout phones like the Moto X.
Call quality is loud and clear (Verizon), and I didnât get any dropped calls, even death-gripping it up and down while using a headset. For speakerphone, the phone itself is loud, and I was able to talk at a conversational tone from across a quiet, medium-sized office and be heard fine.
The new FaceTime camera is really clear. Itâs one of the first things we tested, since FaceTime is the first thing you mess with when a bag full of iPhones shows up at your office, and itâs a nice, noticeable improvement.
There was one time (today, actually) where the TouchID sensor just refused to accept my finger. I entered the passcode and re-locked the phone, and itâs been fine since, but it does introduce the worry that it might break down over time.
If you wake up your phone with the phone button (which apparently everyone does) you can just leave your finger on the sensor and it goes right to your homescreen. This is usually hugely convenient, but sometimes a pain if you just want to look at information on the lock screen.
Should You Buy This?
The 5s is full of contradictions. Itâs iterative, boring, gimmicky, while at the same time taking the first, unsure steps into making the kind of smartphones and software Apple isnât already dominant in. Which is all-important for the company, but less so for whatâs in your pocket.
To you and me, the iPhone 5S is a great phone. Itâs not perfect, though. If youâre a photo nerd or a customization buff, edge toward a Lumia or the Moto X. But most people know, generally, what an iPhone is like. And if thatâs something you want, then yes, buy this. Itâs the best and most convenient version of the iPhone yet.
