Consumer Reports released its review on the iPhone 5s and 5c this week with an interesting take on Apple’s new hardware. Its reviewers praised Apple’s fingerprint recognition system known as Touch ID found on the iPhone 5s, and acknowledged the iPhone 5c as a budget-friendly device for consumers, but found the display size and battery life lacking when compared to new offerings by Motorola.
The magazine especially praised the iPhone 5s camera system, though:
The phone’s 8-megapixel camera, one of the few in our tests capable of taking excellent-quality pictures, has a digital image stabilizer that we confirmed will improve your chances of taking hand-held photos under low-light conditions.
Citing the Motorola Droid Maxx, Ultra, and Mini, Consumer Reports said it experienced up to 24 hours of battery life overall from the Droid hardware when compared to the iPhone’s just under 7 hours of talk time. It also took preference to the ‘larger, sharper’ screens shipping on smartphones from HTC, LG, and Samsung.
It’s worth noting that recent reports have pointed more and more toward Apple testing iPhones sporting larger displays. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the iPhone maker has been experimenting with displays as large as six inches, and KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple will update the iPhone’s display between 4.5-5 inches in 2014.
Apple first updated the iPhone display in 2012 from 3.5″ to 4″ with the iPhone 5, the first time since 2007, but maintained the same width opting to make the display taller instead.
Be sure to read our initial review of the iPhone 5s here.
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“has a digital image stabilizer that we confirmed will improve your chances of taking hand-held photos under low-light conditions.”
Huh? I thought the image stabilization made images sharper, and that the larger aperture was the reason for the good low light performance
When shooting in low-light you typically need to slow down your shutter speed to allow additional light in. Slowing down your shutter often leads to blur. Image Stabilization combats that blur. So, while useful for many things, one of the main benefits of IS is low-light photography.
I’m a first-time smart phone buyer with the 5s. The battery life is deplorable. I’ll be buying a trac phone to keep in the car for emergency purposes.
Not sure about those battery claims on the Moto…
But yea, I’m sure the iPhone could have a 20 hr battery too if it were 9 mm thick and over 5″ tall!
true that :P
and even a weeks backup with the size of samsung galaxy note :xD
Also, they compared talk time on the iPhone to overall battery life on the others. I’m calling BS!
I’ll give them screen size could be a big deal for some people, but at the resolutions we’re talking about, my guess is the perceived better “sharpness” of the Droid screens is probably a placebo effect. I’ve got a 5s and an HTC One, and you can’t tell any difference. I honestly personally feel like the 5s is the better looking screen as far as overall color and brightness are concerned. They didn’t take into account the 5s screen is twice as responsive as other phones’ screens as well.
The display joke is old. It took the android world 3 years to beat the retina density of the iPhone, and now its considered a weak spot. They don’t care about color accuracy, brightness, one hand usability. Its all about size and pixel density (be it pentile or not).
iOS 7 is a crappy OS which is not only not giving any better features (than iOS 6), but is decreasing the already pathetic battery life of my iPhone. The new iPhone 5S is hardly any improvement over the iPhone 5 and the price should not have been increased. The iPhone 5 C is a joke – the less said about this piece of crappy plastic the better. Lets hope next year will see some marked improvement and innovative ideas, else even Apple Fanboys are gonna desert the sinking ship aka Apple…
Being a long-time Apple fanboy (or girl), they almost never mention exactly what’s in the box ! you could get a box without the earphones or without the charger easily: http://www.awardeal.com/iPhone_5s_ebay_review.html