Black, gold, or white
At today’s press conference in Cupertino, Apple announced their new phone, the iPhone 5S. Apple calls it “the most forward-thinking phone anyone’s ever made.” This upgrade of the iPhone 5 keeps its design, but adds an A7 64-bit processor, making it the only phone of the market of its kind. It’s “desktop-class” but still backwards compatible.
The processor itself is two times faster than the iPhone 5. In fact, they say its 56 times faster than the original iPhone.
A new camera has a five-element lens with a f/2.2 aperture and a 15 percent larger sensor. Its new flash changes tone automatically for the best possible image. Auto image stabilization, 120fps slow motion, and a burst mode round out the package.
Battery life is set at 10 hours of 3G talking or LTE browsing, and 250 hours standby.
Pricing is set at $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, and $399 for 64GB with a two-year contract. The iPhone 5S will be available in stores on September 20.
iPhone 5S runs Open GL ES 3.0, allowing for graphically intensive gaming. Epic Games showed off Infinity Blade III running on the new phone. The game has eight worlds, each bigger than the entire first game. Epic says that rendering effects, like depth of field, blur, and full screen vignettes are possible now. It will launch alongside the iPhone 5S.
A new chip inside the 5S is called the M7 is a motion co-processor. It handles accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass functions, continually measuring motion data.
A new home button ditches the little square graphic and adds a fingerprint sensor. The 5S does away with pass codes, replacing them with Touch ID. It scans at 500 ppi resolution, getting down to even sub-epidermal skin layers. You can use this to not only log in, but also to authenticate for iTunes purchases. It also gets us past touching or swiping to unlock the phone.
There’s a new champagne/gold color to go with the traditional black or white. It’s made of all high-grade aluminum build, just like the previous phones.
iOS 7 was covered heavily in this press conference. The OS will be available starting September 18, and will come on this phone, running at 64-bit.
