Faster, new camera and a clever fingerprint reader. But is it enough of an upgrade?
The iPhone 5S: a phone that looks like the iPhone 5, but goes so much further under the hood. Is that going to be enough to impress the baying hoardes?
We've
been here before: the iPhone 'S' conundrum. The new phone comes along,
taking the shell of the previous model, adds some new bits and pieces,
and then claims to be an entirely new phone.
Scores in depth
Which
it is, of course. But also isn't. But mostly is. It's a move that only
Apple can pull off with any kind of conviction: the notion that it can
take the same chassis, have a little tinker, throw in a new CPU,
slightly better battery and camera, and call it an all-conquering
device.
But then again, such is the clamour to know all about it,
is that such a bad move? There are literally millions of people the
world over who can't wait to see what the next handset from Apple will
be, and there was no surprise with the iPhone 5S.
There are a few
who question whether it's 'fair' to launch a phone and then append an
'S' to the same thing a year later - Apple's response would likely be
that nobody is forcing you to buy the new hardware. And that's a fair
point too: yes, this is a phone that bears far too many hallmarks of its
predecessor. And yes, this is the third time Apple has done this.
It's
also managed to try to pop it onto the market complete as one of the
most expensive smartphones out there, even on 3G plans. You'll be
looking at post £50 a month to get one without an upfront fee in the UK,
and £549 will be the price if you want the low end model, pushing all
the way up to over £700 for the 64GB variant. But
if it was such a bad business move, if the market wasn't willing to
accept such a thing, then Apple would have folded as a smartphone brand
years ago... or at least been lagging behind the competition.
That
said, times are changing in the smartphone landscape. Where before
Apple was able to just create the phone it wanted, and forget the
competition in the knowledge that it wasn't going to have to worry about
losing consumers to a competitor, now it's been forced to realise that
there are at least four decent options for a consumer to think about if
they want to get a really rather good handset.
Apple is obviously aware of this change, be it the aluminium unibody of the HTC One,
the new fight into low light cameras or the need for a strong processor
as a headline to shout about, and it's addressed these needs to some
degree or other on the iPhone 5S. Be
it the all new Touch ID home button (which is excellent, more on that
later), the huge jump in CPU power or the fact the camera has, once
again, been improved no end, the new iPhone is clearly Apple's attempt
at bringing as much as it can to the party without having to re-design
the whole concept all over again.
There are many that think that
releasing the same design twice is cheeky, and there are others that
realise that sometimes there's no need for change. It's easy to fall
into the former camp, and while Apple will happily point out it's not forcing anyone
to buy its phones, its acutely aware the competition is now scarily
strong and it needed to bring its best to stay relevant.
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