What’s there to say? It’s the flagship iPhone 5s.
To say that it won’t be wildly successful would be silly. We already know that Apple sold 9 million units of the iPhone 5s, alongside the more colorful iPhone 5c, in the very first weekend of availability. That’s more than any previous generation.
So instead of asking ourselves whether this finger print-reading, awesome picture taking, gold-clad phone is a viable product or not, we should ask ourselves if it’s worth upgrading from the iPhone 5 or the iPhone 4S before it.
The three major upgrades on the phone are the TouchID sensor, letting you unlock your phone or submit purchases with a quick scan of your finger, as well as a major camera update and a processor bump.
Where the camera is concerned, I’ve played around with this TrueTone flash a lot ore after shooting this review, and I’m not as impressed as I’d like to be, though I still think it’s a fine improvement over the original, white-washing flash. I’m far more excited about the camera’s ability to zoom and remain more crisp than before, and slow-motion video functionality is also quite impressive.
In terms of processing speed, daily activities don’t yield a noticeable improvement, as you can see in this video. But I feel as thought the M7 motion coprocessor makes a big difference with the little things, like being constantly asked to join wifi networks.
Last, but certainly not least, the TouchID feature is the most surprising to me. After a couple weeks of using TouchID, something I didn’t expect to care about at all, it’s the one feature I’ve grown most attached to. It only shaves a second or two off of unlocking time, but it’s easy to be spoiled by it.
Not only that, but TouchID is clearly a building block toward a new way of computing. Combine a Siri google search with a quick TouchID unlock and you have answers right before your eyes, with nary a virtual key pressed.
Two flies.