Like clockwork, second week of September brings about the Apple keynote and its customary iDevice launches-- in this year's case, a duo of new iPhones, the 5C and 5S.
Opened, as these things tend to, by CEO Tim Cook the keynote kicked off with talk on the iTunes festival and a new Apple Store before moving on to iOS. Apparently September 2013 sees Apple shipping its 700 millionth iOS device, and the company hopes iOS 7 will become "the world's most popular mobile OS."
But of course the main news is not the update on the venerable iDevice (iPhone 4+, iPad 2+, iPad mini, 5th gen iPod touch) OS, or how the iPhone 5 helped Apple "take [its] iPhone business to an entirely different level." No, the real meat of the keynote is the iPhone 5 replacements-- the multicolour iPhone 5C (in white, pink, green, yellow and blue) and the "forward-thinking" iPhone 5S.
As suggested in earlier rumours, the iPhone 5C is a non-metal (hard-coated polycarbonate) device featuring a 4-inch retina display, A6 processor, 8MP iSight camera and 16/32GB storage. It is "Arsenic-free, mercury-free, and Android-free" (cue laughs from the iFans) and ships with a range of colourful protective silicon cases.
"iPhone 5C is beautifully, unapologetically plastic," Sir Jony Ive says before promising "a solid, dense feel that you would not expect from a plastic product."
Customers wanting a metal handset can get the iPhone 5S, in "high-grade aluminum with cut chamfered edges" available in gold, silver and "space grey" colours. It carries the A7 chip, a 64-bit mobile processor (an industry first, that) promising twice the CPU and graphics performance of the A6 through native 64-bit kernel, libraries and drivers.
Motion data tasks are handled by the M7-- a co-processor in charge of data from the accelerometer, gyroscope and GPS.
The camera also sees improvements (15% larger active sensor area, f/2.2 aperture 5-element lens, "TrueTone"), and Apple promises the battery allows for 10 hours of 3G talk time or LTE browsing, 40 hours of music playback and 250 hours standby.
Another confirmed rumour is the inclusion of a fingerprint sensor, with "Touch ID" replacing the passcode. The sensor is capacitive, reportedly very sensitive (500ppi resolution), scans in 360 degrees and is built into the home button beneath a sapphire crystal top.
Touch ID not only replaces lock screen passcodes-- being built-in it allows quicker iTunes purchases, with one's finger providing authentication. Security is supposed to be "very high level," and fingerprints are stored only inside the A7 chip, not online or backed up on iCloud.
Both iPhone 5C and 5C will be available in Germany, France and the UK from 20 September, and 100 more countries will get the iDevices by December 2013.
Go Apple
