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Apple Unveils iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S

Posted by Soulskill on from the only-24-letters-left-to-choose-from dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Apple unveiled the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S today, which will replace the company's current iPhone 5. Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives took to a stage in California to introduce both devices. The cheaper iPhone 5C features a plastic casing available in a variety of colors (green, blue, reddish-pink, yellow, white); Apple seems to have done its best to make the device look high quality, with the backing and sides molded of a single piece of plastic; on the hardware side of things, the iPhone 5C comes with a 4-inch Retina display, A6 processor, and 8-megapixel camera. The other new Apple design, the iPhone 5S, is the company's next-generation 'hero' device. While the iPhone 5 was a radical new design, the 5S is an iterative upgrade; on the outside, it looks pretty much the same as its predecessor (the new iPhone features a new color, gold, in addition to the 'traditional' black or white aluminum body). The iPhone 5S has an A7 chip built on 64-bit architecture (capable of running 32-bit and 64-bit apps), which is pretty speedy, to put it mildly. There's also the M7 'motion co-processor' which boosts the actions of the accelerometer, compass, and gyroscope—in theory, opening the door to more refined motion-related apps, such as ones devoted to exercise." The iPhone 5S also has a sensor built into the home button that will allow you to unlock the device with your fingerprint. Both new phone will be available for purchase on Friday, Sept. 20th. Apple announced that iOS 7 will be rolling out on Wednesday, Sept. 18th.

18 of 773 comments (clear)

  1. Jobs must be rolling in his grave... by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, Apple releases a tiny 7" tablet, against Jobs recommendation when he was alive. Now they come up with a cheap iPhone, further eroding Aple's premium image.

    What's next, sell iPhones at Walmart??

    1. Re:Jobs must be rolling in his grave... by tnk1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's just the thing. Jobs did not want to be involved in the race to the bottom in terms of price. If they are going to cut expenses, they are not going to want to drop the price with it.

      Jobs wanted to make expensive phones that people would expect to pay a premium for. He left the problem of making it affordable to the cell companies who stepped in and subsidized it with contracts.

      Jobs wanted people to pay good money for his stuff. Part of that is *not* wanting to be compared to the latest effort from some other phone at the same price point. It starts becoming a real brutal game if you join the rest that way. If the 5C is priced with a larger field of phones, there is a higher chance that those other phones might happen upon a feature or design that can beat the 5C. If Apple stays with the high priced market, there are fewer competitors, AND they have more money from sales to keep pushing the envelope. To sell, they market features and an image, they do not market on price.

      I think his model, if you can do it, works. Becoming a commodity is the death knell for your company because relentlessly cutting costs creates a cost-cutting atmosphere. That sort of atmosphere inhibits creativity by both providing a lesser product, but also by making the company less inclined to spend more on talent and research. And in this day and age, that leads to not only your manufacturing going to China, but also your whole corporate model eventually being duplicated by overseas competitors. Cheap is something they can do a lot better than those of us who give our workers a better standard of living.

      I'm not going to say the 5C is a good or a bad idea, but I think that dropping price in and of itself, is not going to be as positive for a company as you might think. It can be a very short term sort of success.

  2. Where's the led notification? by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 5, Funny

    Seriously, when I had an iPhone, the one thing that annoyed me more than anything was the lack of a notification led.

    That's what the S stands for:

    "Still no notification led"

    --
    Summation 2
    1. Re:Where's the led notification? by ricklow · · Score: 5, Funny

      Have you ever tried it? I damn near fried my retinas when it went off.

      --
      "Oh God help us. We're in the hands of engineers."
    2. Re:Where's the led notification? by narcc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or, you know, the blinding flash isn't a suitable alternative to the notification LED.

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
  3. Re:Fingerprint database, anyone? by sessamoid · · Score: 5, Informative

    The fingerprint is saved locally and encrypted on the individual phone's A7 chip. Never goes to iCloud. Never touches Apple servers.

    --
    "No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
  4. Re:Fingerprint database, anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ah... so in other words, it's only available to the NSA.

  5. iPhone fan, but feeling dissappointed by ThomasBHardy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've been a fan of the iPhone since it came out. Love it or hate it, it did change the landscape and it does a lot of things really well. Unfortunately the whizzbang features with the faster processor and fingerprint scanner and such, while nifty, are less compelling to me than getting a larger screen for my aging eyes. That alone knocks it out of my "time to upgrade" category. It feels like too small of an incremental enhancement and not anything singularly so substantial that it's worth plunking down money for.

    --
    Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
  6. Re:Stop with the conferences by Kufat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes.. Note that that's an off-contract price and that it ships with a user-unlockable bootloader.

    (I have no interest in a flame war. It's an answer to the question the parent asked, not an attempt to start an Android vs. iOS argument.)

  7. Re:Fingerprint database, anyone? by _xeno_ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fingerprint is saved locally and encrypted on the individual phone's A7 chip. Never goes to iCloud. Never touches Apple servers.

    Ah, so we've looked through the source code and hardware design to verify that's the case? I mean, the source code and hardware are open, so we can verify them, and the phone is open so we can verify that the binary on the phone matches the source code we have, right?

    What's that, no on all counts?

    Yeah, no, I think I'll pass on trusting Apple with anything, especially considering that their privacy policy (still) says that they track your every move - but it's OK, because they don't attach it to your name, just an unique ID that's attached to your phone that's attached to your name.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
  8. rrrrrradical! by jjeffries · · Score: 5, Funny

    > iPhone 5 was a radical new design

    http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2012/09/iphone5Comparison.jpeg

    Yeah that's FREAKING RADICAL, MAN!

  9. Re:Stock price drop in 3, 2, 1... by Bill_the_Engineer · · Score: 5, Informative

    How much time will Apple be able to sell smartphones at 600-700 USD?

    You mean like the Samsung 4S or the HTC One?

    --
    These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
  10. Re: Hand over your fingerprint! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Look at it from the NSA/FBI's point of view: they already have backdoor access to your phone's data, so the fingerprint scanner isn't about keeping Them out, but about securing biometric data from users voluntarily. If They tried to fingerprint or retina-scan a whole nation Themselves (like our troops do to occupied Afganistan and before in Iraq) there would be resistance; we only got away with it in Afghanistan and Iraq because we were an armed, occupying force. At home, they'll start integrating biometric scanners into cheap, gaudy (GOLD!) baubles so the Sheeple fingerprint themselves instead.

  11. Re:Fingerprint database, anyone? by ThatAblaze · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, let me get this straight. Whenever a user gets arrested the police already take that user's fingerprint. Your phone is now locked with your fingerprint, so the police will no longer have to ask to unlock your phone? Merely by being arrested and owning an iPhone they could claim you have given them implied access to your phone.

  12. Re:Hand over your fingerprint! by Bomarc · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just cut off your fingertip...it's about the same thing.

    Can't wait for new corporate security policies mandating that you change your fingerprints every 3 months.

  13. Re:Hand over your fingerprint! by dyingtolive · · Score: 5, Funny

    Also: He needed a sticky note to remember "teacher". Just reiterating that.

    --
    Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
  14. Need some more tinfoil for that hat? by King_TJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, fine with me if you distrust Apple so much, you suspect they'd stoop to uploading the locally stored fingerprint data to a central server and hang onto all of that data. (Never-mind the fact you'd think if they had an interest in doing so, they would have designed the iPhone 5s so the data synced with their servers in the first place.)

    But how far does this distrust go? Your cellphone carrier can track your movements as long as your cellphone is powered on, you know.... What if they're selling that info to someone? Seems to me you better pass on a cellular phone, period!

  15. Re:Reviving the bit wars? by Dreadrik · · Score: 5, Informative

    The increased address space is not the important part of the ARMv8 64-bit architecture in this case.
    Instead it has twice the number of general purpose registers (31) with twice the size (64 bit) than that of the previous ARMv7 architecture. It also has 32 x 128 bit vector registers, which again is doubled. This allows for more data being processed at the same time, and also saves a bit on memory accesses, which are horribly slow. There are also other improvements such as built in AES encrypting and SHA hashing instructions.