Big iPhone reveal has no big surprises
After Apple unveiled a
pair of new iPhones Tuesday, Tim Cook & Co. made the
phones briefly available for some hands-on (and
fingers-on) testing.
Several hundred bloggers and other guests -- including
musician Elvis Costello, who had been invited by Apple
to play a few songs -- were ushered to a nearby room
to handle the phones.
I got to spend some time playing with both devices. An
in-depth review will have to wait, but here are my first
impressions.
Design of the iPhone 5S
The body of the iPhone 5S is the same
shape andt design at the iPhone 5, but the
company has rolled out some new color
options. The rumored golden iPhone is
real, and a very classy champagne shade
of fake gold. The face of the phone is all
glass over the screen and surrounding
white frame, while the muted gold is only
visible on the sides and back.
Read: New iPhone Apple's 'hero product?'
The 5S also comes in silver and another
new color Apple is calling "space gray."
The gray iPhone is the only one in the 5S
lineup that has a black faceplate instead of
white.
Fingerprint sensor
The most intriguing new hardware feature
on the 5S is the fingerprint sensor in its
Home button. It doesn't replace the old
pass code and can even be turned off. The
phone can be unlocked by using either a
fingerprint or the code, so if you hand a
friend your phone while you're driving,
you can just tell them what number to
enter.
Read: How iPhone 5S makes your finger a
password
Each phone can record up to five
individual fingerprints -- say one for each member of
the family you don't mind using it (maybe purposefully
leaving out the kids). To add a new print, you first must
enter your security code. Pick a finger, preferably the
one you use most to press the Home button. For most
people, this will be their thumb.
To record a print, you place your finger on the home
button until it vibrates and then lift and repeat. This
goes on for a number of times as it gets a full image of
the finger. It also grabs a few impressions of the sides
of your finger for a complete picture.
To open the phone with a fingerprint, you press the
Home button down as usual but then keep the finger
on the small circle. It will automatically skip the pass
code screen and take you to the home screen. You also
can use a fingerprint to pay for purchases from the
App Store or iTunes.
It worked seamlessly when I tested it, though adding
new profiles takes a bit of time. But it's a much faster
way to open the phone than entering a pass code, and
there is no "reading your print now" type of delay on
screen.
Camera
The new camera on the iPhone 5S is packed with a
number of legitimately cool new features, the result of
software and hardware improvements.
The new burst mode, which takes rapid-fire photos at a
rate of 10 per second, is meant for capturing moving
subjects such as twitchy children or sprinting athletes. I
took 40 shots in four seconds -- so many that scrolling
through them created a neat time-lapse video effect.
You can dig through all 40 images yourself to find the
winners, but Apple has added a feature that identifies
what it thinks are the best in the bunch automatically
based on things such as exposure, blur and if the
subject's eyes are open. Out of the 40 images, two were
highlighted with a small gray dot. In the camera roll,
the burst photos were lumped together in one pile so I
could easily delete all the extras after I picked my final
shots.
With another new feature, I tried making a slow-motion
video. The camera can record 120 frames per second,
which is helpful for slowing down and stretching out
detailed scenes. You scroll to the Slow-Mo setting
before shooting the video. After the clip is recorded,
you choose what section of it to slow down. The final
video looked impressively professional, even though it
was just of tech bloggers milling about a room.
The room was a bit too bright to accurately test out the
new flash. Apple claims the flash will automatically
adjust color and intensity depending on the subject and
lighting situation. It has two different colored LED lights
instead of the usual one. A better flash would be a
welcome improvement over the traditional LED flashes
on iPhones (and most other smartphones) that flood
scenes with harsh light.
Graphics
The faster processor inside the 5S means everything is
zippier, including the graphics. This is the case with
every new iPhone, so it's hard to tell how much of an
upgrade this one is. But the high-end game apps did
look rich.
Apple is calling the new graphics "console level," so next
time we'll have to test it head to head with an Xbox.
iPhone 5C
The lower-priced iPhone 5C doesn't have as many
fancy new hardware features. Instead, its pizazz is
mostly on the outside. Apple rounded the corners
down and encased the 5C in a smooth hard plastic
shell instead of metal. Plastic has a reputation of being
cheap and breakable, but Apple is pitching this as high-
end plastic.
Apple design head Jony Ive even says, "The iPhone 5C is
beautifully, unapologetically plastic."
The polycarbonate body does feel sturdier than other
plastic phones, and the phone still has bit of weight to
it. The entire back side of the phone is one seamless
piece of plastic and comes in blue, green, pink, yellow
and white. The colors look subdued in press images,
but in person the green and pink are a bit more
fluorescent and bright.
Apparently Apple didn't think one super bright color
was enough, so it also created a line of $29 soft silicon
shells for the 5C. The blue, green, pink, yellow, black
and white cases have a grid of holes in the back so you
can see the original shade of the 5C through them as
lines of dots.
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