Apple iPhone 5S review 21 may 2014

While the Android world was going big-screen, Apple has steadfastly stuck to its more pocket-friendly design with the iPhone 5S. In fact, on a first glance, there's very little to tell this smartphone from the

iPhone 5. With larger-and-larger phones coming out, the question is whether or not Apple has lost the plot.The good news is that Apple seems to know exactly what it's doing and the iPhone 5S remains a beautifully made and desirable smartphone. While it may look like its predecessor, this phone is an improvement in practically every way.

Build quality

The one area where Apple hasn't managed to better itself is with build quality, and that's only because the iPhone 5 was such a great phone. Apple doesn't skimp on premium materials and the metal body and Gorilla Glass covered screen still look and feel fantastic.It's not just the materials, but the attention to detail that catches the eye. Its precision-cut aluminium rear sits absolutely flush with glass panels that sit at the top and bottom. The smartphone's neat bevelled edges are perfectly formed and the 7.3mm thick phone feels incredibly comfortable in the hand. Weighing just 112g, which still feels almost impossibly light when you pick up the smartphone for the first time, the iPhone 5S is incredible to look at and hold.

The build quality of the iPhone 5S is second-to-noneIf you're coming from a large-screen Android phone, the iPhone 5S does look a little small, but for all practical purposes it's still a great size. It fits easily in one hand, letting you use it with just your thumb, while you can put it comfortably in any pocket.

Compared to the Galaxy S5, the iPhone 5S is small, but it's easy to use and will slip into any pocketFor this year's models, the white model is the same as last year's, but there are also two new colours. Space Gray replaces the 'black' model of last year and is subtly different, with the case a purer grey than last year's blue-grey model. It's the Gold edition that's really different. Pictures don't do it justice, as it tends to look quite garish, but in the flesh the champagne gold finish is altogether more subtle and classier.Gold model aside, the biggest issue of the iPhone 5S's looks is that to the untrained eye it doesn't look as though you've bought a new phone, although Apple has at least eased the burden by taking the iPhone 5 off sale, replacing it with the plastic iPhone 5C instead.

It's hard to tell the iPhone 5S from the iPhone 5, but the new Home button, which holds the fingerprint reader is the biggest clueThere is one big clue that the phone you've got is the iPhone 5S: the metal-rimmed home button, which no longer has the familiar-looking square icon in it. As you're no doubt aware, this is the brand-new fingerprint reader, Touch ID. With Touch ID, rather than having to tap in a PIN to unlock your phone, you can simply hold your finger over the sensor. If that sounds like a gimmick, it's not: it's actually a brilliant time saver and something that helps enforce security.

Touch ID

Touch ID can be programmed to recognise up to five fingers (they can be just yours or yours and trusted other people). All you have to do is hold your finger to the sensor repeatedly, while the iPhone 5S builds up an image of what your print looks like. You're prompted to move your finger around, to get full coverage, and even to use the side of your finger so that you can use Touch ID from pretty much any angle. With that done, you're ready to go.

Touch ID lets you register up to five finger prints, which can include prints from different peopleApple had some complaints when the phone first came out that Touch ID wasn't particularly reliable. However, an iOS update has fixed that and made the fingerprint reader faster and much more reliable. Plus, you can help things along by registering the same finger twice, dramatically increasing the recognition levels.We have to say that it works pretty much flawlessly, at any angle and, impressively, any rotation, so you can even tap Touch ID with your phone upside down to get it to work. We found that other people's fingers couldn't unlock the phone either. What's particularly brilliant is how you can unlock the phone in one go: just click the home button to switch on the iPhone 5S, then release and hold to unlock it in one smooth move. The only times we have suffered any problems are with a wet finger, such as after washing our hands; for the most part, the sensor works brilliantly.This ease of use shouldn’t overshadow the technological effort that has gone into creating Touch ID. It's massively impressive that Apple has managed to fit the best fingerprint reader we've used underneath a button. Even better, you only have to touch the reader for it to work; with the Samsung Galaxy S5, you have to swipe your finger over the button, which isn't quite as easy or as user friendly.Perhaps more importantly, setting up Touch ID requires you to set a PIN for your phone, which is required after a reboot and to access key settings, such as adding new fingerprints. So, in adding easier-to-use security, Apple is also pushing people to be more secure in general.

Using TouchID requires you to turn on a passcode, making your phone more secureThen, there's the future of the technology. At the moment Touch ID can be used to unlock your phone and to buy from iTunes and the App Store, rather than having to enter your password. It makes sense that Apple will open this system up at some point in the future, at least to certain developers, so you could use your fingerprint to access your bank, for example. Nothing has been announced, but we'd be surprised if Touch ID isn't used for more over the coming year.Fingerprints are stored in the phone's A7 chip's Secure Enclave, where they're not shared or uploaded to iCloud. This helps boost security and should stop the fingerprint reader being hacked. Of course, the system is not entirely fool-proof, but Apple quotes a 50,000-in-1 chance of someone being able to unlock the phone, which is still better than the 10,000-in-1 chance of someone guessing a four-digit PIN.

Screen

Given that the phone size hasn't changed, Apple hasn't changed the screen, so you get the same 4in 1,136x640 screen that was used in the iPhone 5. Again, you can get higher resolution, bigger screens moving to Android, but we don't see the iPhone 5S's size as a problem.

It's the same screen as on the iPhone 5, but that's no problem as it's sharp, has excellent viewing angles and great coloursFor starters, there's plenty of resolution for web browsing and apps, with the interface disappearing off-screen when you're reading pages, giving the full screen over to the current task. Next, the 326ppi pixel density is what Apple calls a Retina display. This means that when you view the screen at a normal distance, you can't view individual pixels. In other words, everything looks pin-sharp and more resolution wouldn't achieve anything, bar making icons and text too small to read without scaling.Image quality is excellent, too. Apple has used a high-quality IPS panel and it's still one of the best smartphone displays. It's evenly lit, bright, produces excellent whites and vibrant colours, and the excellent viewing angles mean that you can see what's on screen clearly from anywhere.

Performance

For the real changes, you have to go under the surface. Inside, the iPhone 5S is a brand-new phone with a new System on a Chip (SoC), the Apple A7. Now rolled out to the iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina Display, it was the first 64-bit mobile CPU.It sounds exciting, but the real benefits are a little harder to understand. First, and not so importantly, 64-bit chips can address more memory than 32-bit chips. This is important in a desktop computer, where a 32-bit chip can only handle around 3.5GB of RAM, but in a smartphone where 1GB or 2GB of RAM is all that's required, this is only something that will become important in the future.More importantly, moving to 64-bit means that the Apple can use a newer ARM architecture. The ARMv8 core now has double the number of general-purpose registers, compared to the ARMv7 used in the A6, with 31 64-bit wide registers. This means that the CPU has to access the comparatively slow system memory less, improving speed and efficiency, regardless of whether an application is 32-bit or 64-bit.

It's no bigger than the iPhone 5, but the iPhone 5S has a much faster SoC, with some new custom features

Finally, with a new architecture, Apple can use more optimisations to improve the speed of its applications and OS; as developers move to 64-bit, too, we should see these improvements everywhere.

That's by-the-by, but the real proof is in actual performance. Apple's figures say that the new chip is up to double the speed for graphics and system apps. Our initial tests would seem to show that this is about right. In the Sunspider Java benchmark, the iPhone 5 running iOS 7 completed the test in 708.6ms; the iPhone 5S did it in 416.2ms. The Samsung Galaxy S5 was marginally quicker, completing the test in 391ms, but there's little practical difference. Given that the A7 is a dual-core chip and the Galaxy S5 uses a quad-core CPU, it shows that it's not the number of cores that's the most important thing when it comes to processor speed.We ran 3D Mark Ice Storm on the phone, too. It completely Maxed out both the standard and Extreme tests, not even returning a score. When running Ice Storm Unlimited, we got a score of 14,506. This is amazing performance and puts the iPhone 5S up there with the latest Android handsets.Raw figures aren't everything, though. It's the combination of hardware and software that really makes the difference and, as Apple controls both, the results are fantastic. Despite Android improving a lot, iOS on an iPhone is still the smoothest, neatest user experience with no juddering or slow-downs in any of the operating system's transitions or animations.As the A7 is a SoC, it also has some additional silicon for other jobs, including the Secure Enclave for Touch ID and dedicated Image Signal Processor for the camera, which handles some of the effects including image stabilisation, colour correction and light balance (more of this later).

Apple M7 motion coprocessor

This year Apple has added the new M7 motion coprocessor. This low-power part's job is to collect data from the integrated sensors, including accelerometers, gyroscopes and compasses. It can even do this while the phone is sleeping, making the data it collected available to the CPU when it wakes up. Having this means that the phone can use its sensors more without affecting battery life.For example, if you put your phone where it has no signal, say in a locker at the gym, the M7 can use the sensors and work out that the phone's not moving. As it's not moving, it knows it's not worth hunting for a signal, so it can save on battery power.

The M7 co-processor means the iPhone knows how you're moving, so it can change directions to suit

There are other clever uses, too, as the M7 can understand your type of movement, so it knows if you're driving, walking or running. This is used currently in Apple Maps, which automatically switches driving instructions to walking instructions when you get out of your car. It's a small addition, but it makes the smartphone, well, smarter.

Battery life

The combination of the new processor, M7 motion process and a slightly larger battery all mean that the iPhone 5S has better battery life than its predecessor. Running at half brightness with Wi-Fi turned off, our iPhone 5S lasted 14h 31m in our video playback test; the iPhone 5 lasted 12h 4m. Apple is also quoting improved 4G surfing time, at 10 hours. We've certainly noticed that a charge lasts a lot longer on the iPhone 5S and at the end of the day our phone's not gasping for power in quite the same way.

Camera

Rather than up the pixel count for the new iSight camera, Apple has get the same 8-megapixel resolution, but gone for a sensor that's 15 per cent bigger than the one on the iPhone 5. This means that the pixels are larger at 1.5 microns. In layman's terms, larger pixels means more light per pixel, which means better low-light performance. Add in the new f/2.2 aperture lens, which lets in more light than the iPhone 5's f/2.4 lens, and the new model should be able to shoot more detail in low light.

A brand new iSight camera is fitted, with a larger f/2.2 lens and a larger (by surface area) 8-megapixel sensor

In bright light it makes less of a difference, with both phones producing similarly-as-detailed shots. We'd say the colours and exposure on the iPhone 5S are better, and you get better dynamic range.

The iPhone 5S (bottom) has better colours and better exposure than the iPhone 5 (top)There's little to tell between the two in terms of detail. In bright lighting the higher pixel count of the 13-megapixel Galaxy S4 means that there's slightly more detail in its images, purely because of the higher resolution.

Looking at the detail, the iPhone 5's shot (top) is similar to the iPhone 5S's shot (bottom)

In low light we found that the iPhone 5 generally struggled and noise became a big issue. With the iPhone 5S things are a lot better. In very dark rooms, noise was reduced considerably, while retaining a lot of detail in the image. It's impressive the difference here.We also put the iPhone 5S through our photography still life setup, photographing a toy train and cuddly animals under a variety of different lighting conditions. As you can see from the two shots below, in full lighting, the detail is excellent, with plenty of fuzz on the monkey's cheeks and the toy train retaining its glossy plastic exterior.

Switching the main lights off, so that the scene was dimly lit produced excellent results, too. The colours are a bit more muted, as you can see from the sample shots below, but that's too be expected given the lighting. However, there's still plenty of detail in the picture and not much noise, either.

Turning the lights off completely, so that the scene is lit entirely by the spinning fans. This is the hardest shot to deal with, but the iPhone 5S did pretty well. There's not too much noise in the image and the scene has retained its detail. The blue fan behind the monkey hasn't come out too well, though, with detail getting blurred.

When you do need to change to the flash, things get even better, as the iPhone 5S has dual-LED True Tone flash. This has one white LED and one amber LED. By analysing the scene, thanks to the image processor on the A7 chip, the iPhone 5S can work out the colour temperature of the scene and fire a flash accordingly. This means it's goodbye to strange colour casts on image, or unnatural skin tones. In fact, with True Tone pictures no longer look as though they were taken with a flash, it's that impressive.

True Tone flash gets rid of all of the tell-tale signs that you're using the flash - it can even cope with a black cat in a dark room

You also get better and more natural coverage with True Tone. We shot a few sample shots in a dimly-lit bedroom and the differences are astounding. With the iPhone 5, the front part of the image was too brightly lit, creating a shiny effect that's the tell-tale sign a flash is being used. It also missed all of the detail towards the rear of the shot, giving everything a slightly unnatural appearance. With the iPhone 5S and True Tone, things are completely different.

You can see that the iPhone 5 (top) loses detail in the distance, but the iPhone 5S (bottom) creates a more natural-looking shot with more detail

We also tried shooting our still-life, which has one tricky setup where there are blue lights. Using the flash, the camera correctly measured and identified the blue hue and corrected the flash to compensate. The results, are rather incredible, with most of the blue light gone from the image, while retaining the detail and colour of the other objects in the scene. We've never seen a flash that's capable of doing that.

Even when dealing with the harshest lighting, the True Tone flash finds a way to produce detailed pictures

There are some new shooting modes, too. First is burst mode, which you see a lot on compact cameras. However, here, it's something even more impressive, as the iPhone 5S can shoot at 10fps, full resolution for as long as you've got spare storage space. We hit more than 200 pictures at the phone showed no sign of slowing down.

Burst mode means you don't miss the shot you want, with the option to choose your favourite shots to save later

Burst mode pictures are marked separately in the Photos app and aren't saved to iCloud by default. When you open a burst collection the iPhone automatically chooses which ones it thinks are the best shots, although you can easily select other shots instead. Marked shots are then saved to the phone independently and uploaded to iCloud. With your favourites stored, you can delete entire burst collections in one go, so your phone won't get cluttered with shots.

Filters are non-destructive and the neat thumbnail view helps you choose which one's best to use

Thanks to iOS 7 there are now more filters available on the phone, so you can switch to black and white, sepia, amongst others, when you take a shot. Filters are non-destructive (copy the images off the phone via USB and you'll get the original image), so you can remove a filter at a later date or add one to a normal photo instead. The same goes for the square mode pictures, which are non-destructive crops of the original image, so you can recover the full frame if you want.Panoramas are still as impressive as when they were introduced with the iPhone 5. Just turn on the spot while holding the phone steady using the online guide and the images are stitched together practically as quickly as you can move.

HD Video

It's the video camera that's had the biggest overhaul thanks to the A7's image processor. As well as shooting 1080p video, which looks great, even in low-light thanks to the new sensor, it has a brand-new Slo-Mo mode, which shoots 720p at 120fps. When played back at the regular 30fps, you get stunning slow motion.

The Slo-Mo editing tools is dead impressive and makes it easy to choose which bit of the footage you want in slow motion

Slow-motion is becoming more popular with the latest high-end smarpthones, but it's still just as impressive on the iPhone 5S. What makes the mode a joy to use is the simple built-in editing tools, which uses simple sliders to set which part of the video you want to play back at full speed. It's super easy to use and you can bash out a home video that Zack Snyder would be proud off in seconds. As you can see from the example below, the quality really is amazing.Raw video footage pulled off the phone via USB is just at 120fps, so if you want to keep the slow-motion portion of the video, you need to share the video, such as by uploading to YouTube, or make sure it's backed up to iCloud.Note that if you transfer a slow-motion video to another iOS device using AirDrop, such as an iPad, the video is compressed fixing where the slow-motion part is. If you want to edit on another device, make sure you use the slider controls to remove the slow-motion part, so the video is transferred in its complete 120fps mode.As we said, regular video doesn't suffer at all and is shot at 30fps at a resolution of 1,920x1,080. Thanks to the new sensor having larger pixels, it means that footage is cleaner, particularly in low-light, when compared to the iPhone 5. As you can see in the example shot below, taken from the full video, when in relatively low light, the image is still detailed, colours are good and there's very little noise, either.To see the camera in action with the actual footage, you can play the YouTube video below, which shows how the camera deals with a dimly lit scene, a darkly-lit scene and a brightly-lit scene.

iOS 7.1

Since the iPhone 5S was launched with iOS 7, Apple has released iOS 7.1 as an update, which fixes a few bugs and makes a couple of interface tweaks. The biggest change with iOS 7.1 is that it makes the OS a lot more stable. One of the complaints about iOS 7 was that over time it suffered more home-screen crashes. These are where the phone switches back to the white screen with the Apple logo, looking as though it's completely restarted; however, only the UI had crashed and the phone and apps were still running normally.Thankfully iOS 7.1 fixed that completely on our review sample. Brand-new phones should ship with the latest OS, but if you end up with one running iOS 7.0 take our advice: update it immediately.Otherwise, iOS 7.1 is a huge improvement over iOS 6. The interface has been tweaked and tidied up, making it look cleaner and friendlier. It's a change that the OS has been crying out for, for years.It also introduces some much-needed features, starting off with Control Centre, a swipe-up menu you can access from anywhere. Now, rather than having to delve through loads of Settings menus, you can simply pull up Control Centre on any screen or app to toggle Airplane mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb and the rotation lock, You can also access playback controls for the current bit of media, control brightness and use the utilities: torch, stopwatch, calculator and camera.

Control Centre is a quick way to change common settings and is so much better than having to delve through SettingsWe're fans of the new Today screen, which pulls down from the top. This shows you your appointments for the day and has tabs to view all notifications, as well as missed calls. It's a great place to put everything.

The Today screen is a great way to see what's on, and there are tabs to see All and Missed notifications, tooThe interface is generally improved throughout, putting more into each app, so you don't have to go through Settings. For example, hit the new tab button on Safari and you can enter Private mode; that was a good few steps to achieve the same in iOS 6.IOS 7.1 updates the Calendar app from the one that shipped with iOS 7. Now you can view all of your appointments in a list, while a 'peak' view lets you tap any day to view what you've got on. With iOS 7 the only way to view appointments was to go into day view, so this is a big improvement.

iOS 7.1 gives the calendar app a much-needed tweak

Apple Maps has been steadily improving and its search has got a lot better. As we mentioned before, it can work with the M7 motion processor to swap directions from driving to walking when you get out of the car. It has to be said that Google Maps is still that bit better, though, and as it's available in the app store, Apple Maps is no longer the one detracting feature of the operating system.AirDrop is new for iOS 7, too, and it's a brilliant way to share files and links between iOS devices. All you do is hit the share button in an app and select AirDrop, then select a contact from the screen and your selected content is transferred via Wi-Fi. The default security option means you only share things with people in your contact list, so you don't have to worry about getting spammed by anyone in the vicinity. Apple says that this method of transferring files is easier than NFC and having to awkwardly tap two devices together and we have to agree.That said, NFC still has its place and it's a shame not to see it on this phone. NFC is great for contactless payments, particularly as the readers are in so many shops now, and great for setting up some devices, such as cameras for remote control. Not having NFC isn't enough to put us off the iPhone 5S, but we'd still expect to see it.Of course, you still get access to the brilliant App Store. Android is catching up, but Apple still takes the crown for the largest selection of quality apps and you'll generally get everything first on this platform.

4G and Wi-Fi

Apple has upgraded the 4G LTE chip inside, so that the iPhone 5S will work on a lot more bands than the iPhone 5. Its LTE band support of 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 20 means that the UK model will work on 4G on any network in the UK, including the 2,600MHz band. However, the supported bands also mean that the UK model is compatible with the majority of European networks and a good number in Asia, which will be useful when 4G roaming deals come into play (we have been waiting a long time, though). However, it's still not compatible with the vast majority of North American networks, with the 850MHz U.S. Cellular network the notable exception.802.11n (dual-band) remains the Wi-Fi networking technology of choice. Some other handsets have 802.11ac built-in, but this will only make a difference if you've got an 802.11ac router, fast broadband and you're downloading loads of files. For what you're most likely using the iPhone 5S for, 802.11n is more than fine.

Conclusion

Since the iPhone 5S came out, there's been some stiff competition from the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S5. Strictly-speaking it's not an apples-for-apples (sorry) comparison and mostly comes down to your preferences. If you want Android and a larger screen, clearly you need to go elsewhere and the Galaxy S5 should be your phone.

Small is beautiful

For everyone else, there's a lot to love about this handset. Yes, it's smaller than the competition, but after using it extensively we have to say that we love its size. It's neat, easy to use one-handed and slips neatly into any pocket.There's no getting away from the power, either, with the A7 chip keeping up with the best that the Android competition has to offer, even though they use quad-core processors.This is largely down to iOS 7.1, which Apple has refined and improved. Android's good, but iOS is better: it's quicker, more responsive and you don't get any slow-downs. Now with the Today screen and Control Centre, iOS no longer has those annoying design foibles that forced you to delve through loads of menus to make simple changes.Granted, Apple will be releasing a replacement for this handset in the next few months (either the iPhone 6 or iPhone Air, depending on who you want to believe), which will most likely have a larger screen. We can't compare this handset to one that doesn't exist, though, so for now, even after being on sale for eight months, the iPhone 5S stands up brilliantly to the competition and remains the brilliantly-made and desirable handset it was at launch.

Details
Part Code	iPhone 5S
Review Date	21 May 2014
Price	£549
Rating
Award	Best Buy

Hardware
Main display size	4.0in
Native resolution	1,136x640
CCD effective megapixels	8-megapixel
Flash	dual LED (True Tone)
GPS
Internal memory	16384MB
Memory card support	none
Memory card included	0MB
Operating frequencies	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900, HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 /2100, LTE Bands 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 20
Wireless data	LTE
Size	123.8x25.6x7.3mm
Weight	112g

Features
Operating system	Apple iOS 7
Microsoft Office compatibility	N/A
FM Radio
Accessories	headphones, data cable, charger
Talk time	10 hours
Standby time	250 days

Buying Information
SIM-free price	£549
Price on contract	£37 per month, 24-month contract
SIM-free supplier	www.apple.com
Contract/prepay supplier	www.three.co.uk
Details	www.apple.com