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"  The Apple iPhone &amp;quot;S&amp;quot; versions are usually iterative rather than transformative\u2014a set of incremental enhancements with minimal changes to design. This thinking made it easy for Apple fans to write off the odd-year phone launch in the past, but the iPhone 5s breaks out of this pattern. It may look like a replica of last year&amp;#039;s model, but the experience is vastly different once you pick it up and use it. It is, unequivocally, Apple&amp;#039;s best smartphone so far. There&amp;#039;s isn&amp;#039;t a lot of new material, design-wise, to cover, but there are a few spot checks you can do to figure out if the guy next to you is holding the iPhone 5s. First, the home button: It&amp;#039;s completely flat now, circled by a sloped edge. This time around, the &amp;quot;black&amp;quot; iPhone is actually &amp;quot;space gray&amp;quot;\u2014that&amp;#039;s the one I tested. There&amp;#039;s also a new gold model that&amp;#039;s so highly coveted that it reportedly won&amp;#039;t be shipping until October. And on the back of the phone, you&amp;#039;ll find a couple more differences: the dual-flash LED and the &amp;quot;iPhone&amp;quot; brand in a slimmer font towards the bottom. If you&amp;#039;ve used any of Apple&amp;#039;s smartphones in the past, you&amp;#039;ll already know how it feels to hold the 5s. It&amp;#039;s still comfortable to use one-handed, though touching that flat home button takes a little getting used to after feeling a curved one for years. It also looks like the chamfered edges around the iPhone 5s&amp;#039;s home button might collect more dirt as you use it compared to the old seamless button on past models. Speaking of the home button, it of course doubles as the much-ballyhooed fingerprint sensor\u2014the new piece of hardware in the iPhone 5s that can scan your fingerprint and use it to unlock the device. When setting up your phone, you&amp;#039;ll encounter a screen that invites you to &amp;quot;lift and rest your finger on the Home button repeatedly.&amp;quot; Touch ID is quick to calibrate\u2014it takes about a minute\u2014and up to five fingerprints can be registered on one device. You can choose to register several of your own fingers, or record the fingers of multiple members of your family. Afterwards, the prints can be set to unlock the device or authorize purchases from Apple&amp;#039;s app stores (for songs, apps, and e-books), or both. For those concerned with privacy, Apple says fingerprint data is stored on an isolated portion of the iPhone&amp;#039;s A7 processor, kept secret from both app developers and even the company&amp;#039;s own servers. The big fear people had about heaping praise on the fingerprint sensor prematurely was that it might turn out to be a total gimmick. This isn&amp;#039;t the case at all. It&amp;#039;s a feature that noticeably speeds up your phone use, and is a huge convenience. At my office in New York, we&amp;#039;re required to lock down our phones for better email security, and having to type out my passcode every time I want to use my phone is a pain. With the 5s, all I had to do was hold my finger to the iPhone for a few seconds, and it quickly unlocked. According to Apple, the fingerprint algorithm also &amp;quot;learns&amp;quot; your print better as you use it more, eventually eliminating those pesky &amp;quot;Try Again&amp;quot; screens (they only happened with me a few times, then stopped). Once you get used to it, it&amp;#039;s difficult\u2014irritating, even\u2014to return to regular passcodes. There&amp;#039;s a lot to like inside the 5s. It boasts a beefy 64-bit A7 system-on-a-chip, which is the world&amp;#039;s first for a smartphone. 64-bit processing coming to the iPhone is a pretty huge deal. It means the device can crunch bigger chunks of data at a time, and thus speed through tasks much more rapidly. According to Apple, the chip actually doubles the iPhone 5s&amp;#039;s CPU and GPU performance, though it&amp;#039;ll be hard to tell that difference right off the bat\u2014the processor-intensive applications that the A7 is designed to buttress don&amp;#039;t actually exist yet. Anecdotally though, I could already tell that the 5s&amp;#039;s general performance was much improved over my iPhone 5. Apps launched faster, the camera snapped photos quicker, and animations were more fluid. This made the entire experience seem refreshed\u2014like I was indeed using a brand new phone. It&amp;#039;s also good to know that when the newer, more robust apps inevitably trickle in, the iPhone 5s will be able to handle them. Sitting next to the A7 processor is another Apple creation designed to streamline performance: the M7 motion coprocessor. The chip attends to the data gathered from the phone&amp;#039;s gyroscope, accelerometer, and compass\u2014and since this processing is done separately, it&amp;#039;s less taxing on the 5s&amp;#039;s battery. However, like the A7 chip, it&amp;#039;ll be a while before the M7&amp;#039;s true potential is seen. This depends on the release of third-party apps that use the phone&amp;#039;s sensors pretty heavily (think activity trackers, fitness apps, and other apps that leverage this kind of data). On the other hand, the M7 already sports a pretty useful characteristic: It can sense when the iPhone 5s is at rest for a long period of time, which triggers a command that conserves the phone&amp;#039;s resources. The new camera still has 8 megapixels, but it incorporates a bigger sensor, which means more light can be collected and each recorded pixel is slightly bigger. I took a couple of still-life pictures with the iPhone 5 and the 5s in the shade, and picture quality on the iPhone 5s outflanked the iPhone 5 by far\u2014the images were crisper and less grainy, even with low lighting. When you&amp;#039;re using the camera, you&amp;#039;ll also notice how well the A7 chip performs: Burst mode, which lets you shoot 10 frames per second, is near instant. Slow-motion filming was smooth, too (and addictive, once I got started). The iPhone 5s records 720p resolution video at 120 frames per second, and plays it back at 30 fps; the result is a gorgeous effect will probably overwhelm Facebook soon. I also appreciated True Tone flash, which fires two differently colored lights that better illuminate your subject. My subject&amp;#039;s skin tone was much more natural-looking in the photos I snapped using the 5s compared to my iPhone 5. Generally, though, picture quality was best when I didn&amp;#039;t use flash at all. The iPhone 5s has a 1570 mAh battery, while the iPhone 5&amp;#039;s is a 1440 mAh capacity. Though that&amp;#039;s technically a step up, after turning on the device straight out of the box and using it for an entire afternoon (about six hours), the iPhone 5s drained to 37%. I didn&amp;#039;t feel like I used the 5s any differently than I typically use my iPhone 5 throughout the day\u2014checking email, shooting off text messages, chatting, and listening to music\u2014but I didn&amp;#039;t detect any improvement in battery life, which was disappointing. That said, I enjoyed using the iPhone 5s. The introduction of iOS 7 helped too. The slew of new features it brought to the table were appealing enough to hold my interest, even while I was (and continue to be) heartily opposed to Jony Ive&amp;#039;s color choices. I like the new multitasking scheme, where you get rid of windows by simply swiping them away. I like the addition of iTunes Radio, so I&amp;#039;m not forced to stick with Pandora forever. I haven&amp;#039;t needed to use AirDrop (yet), but I can see how it could come in handy at some point in the future. But my favorite feature is Control Center, which gives a user access to a number of essential tools and widgets that you used to find by digging into multiple menus on the Settings page. Just swipe up from the bottom, and a menu slides into view. It brings up a row of toggle buttons (Airplane Mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, and orientation lock), a brightness slider, and shortcuts to alarms, your music, calculator and camera; even a flashlight. It lacks the customization that&amp;#039;s a hallmark of Android, though\u2014unfortunately, you can&amp;#039;t personalize this panel. This year, Apple played it shrewdly. It might be tempting, at first, to dismiss the phone as just another &amp;quot;S&amp;quot; version: the kind that comes between the years &amp;quot;that matter,&amp;quot; essentially a clone of an earlier model\u2014and the easiest to decide to skip. But with iOS 7, fingerprint sensing, 64-bit support, an impressively powerful A7 chip and a handy M7 coprocessor, the 5s turns into a package that&amp;#039;s hard to ignore. And now that the budget iPhone 5c exists, giving consumers more options, the premium on the 5s climbs higher. Whether you&amp;#039;re an appreciator of specs or you simply like a good user experience, the iPhone 5s is appealing. (Assuming you&amp;#039;re fully committed to the Apple ecosystem, that is.) So should you pony up the cash\u2014at least $199 for the 16GB model on a fresh two-year contract\u2014for one of these handsets? It&amp;#039;s a tough call. I own an iPhone 5 and I&amp;#039;m not due for an upgrade for several more months. I was dead set on holding out for next year&amp;#039;s iPhone 6 launch before buying my next smartphone\u2014which I&amp;#039;ll probably still do. But now that I&amp;#039;ve seen what the iPhone 5s can do, the pact I made with myself doesn&amp;#039;t feel so ironclad. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/reviews/a9482/iphone-5s-hands-on-review-15949402/>