It had never happened since 2007 - the year of the launch of the first iPhone with the bitten apple symbol - that Apple presented two smartphones in the same press conference. Just as it had never happened that one of the two, in this case the iPhone 5c which acted as sparring partner in the announcement of the 5s model, was a low cost mobile phone, a term and concept that has always been banned in the parts of Cupertino.
What then low cost is done to say: the 5c, which will be released in Italy only in December (in the first tranche of countries the release is scheduled for September 20), will still cost the beauty of 599 euros. Certainly, in any case, less than the main model, the 5s, which will vary as usual from 699 to 899 euros and will be available in gold, white and black (which in reality tend towards silver and space gray respectively); while the "dolphin", defined not by chance by the head of marketing of Apple, Phil Schiller, "funnier and more colourful", it will be sold in 5 bright colors (including yellow) which according to many recall the style of Andy Warhol.
Apple therefore yields, at least in part, to the logic of price competition: while until now the new one was bought for 700 euros and the old one for 500, now another new one is offered at more or less the same price, following a strategy already used by Samsung with the Galaxy, by Huawei with the Ascend or by Sony with the Xperia. An obligatory choice, moreover, given that the share of the Cupertino-branded smartphone market in the last quarter was just 14% globally, against 31% of Samsung's Koreans; it's the same iOS operating system, which with iPhone 5s is offered in version 7, is now detached from Google's Android which supplies more than 80% of the smartphones around the world.
But beyond prices and strategies, what's new with the new jewel of the bitten apple? The processor is an Apple A7 64bit with power that increases CPU performance by 40% and graphics performance by 56%. The camera integrates a proprietary 5-lens system with an F/2.0 aperture, sensor with 15% larger pixel area and 1.5 micron pixels themselves, double flash on the back for 1000 different shades and 15-point autofocus system, there is burst shooting at 10 frames per second and slow- motion at 120 frames per second.
The battery, which in some of the latest models had been disappointing, lasts 10 hours talk time, 10 hours LTE and 250 hours standby. Then confirmed most of the rumors of the eve, including the presence of Touch ID fingerprint sensor that scans the epidermis layer of the finger at 500ppi via a special ring around the home button. It will unlock the iPhone as well as replace the password for in-app purchases and so on.
Here is the data sheet of the iPhone 5S:
IOS 7 operating system
Touch screen 4? Retina display
A7 processor and M7 motion co-processor
8 megapixel iSight camera with True Tone flash
FaceTime HD camera on the front
Touch ID system for fingerprint recognition
Connectivity 13 LTE wireless bands
Dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi with speeds up to 150 Mbps
Bluetooth 4.0
Battery with 10 hours of talk time on 3G networks, up to 10 hours of web browsing on Wi-Fi and LTE networks and up to 8 hours on 3G networks, and up to 10 hours of video playback and up to 40 hours of audio playback .
