Brief impressions of iPhone 5C over iPhone 4 and 3GS. Improvements: Feels less dense than iPhone 4. I always felt that my iPhone 4 was too thin, even with casing, and that made it tough to type on it easily. 5C feels less dense, but is bulkier, giving it more of a similar feel to my beloved 3GS. Seems to have a better 3G antenna/chip. With my 3GS and iPhone 4, all I had to do was move a bit at home and they would lose 3G, dropping me to GSM. 5C is able to maintain 3G lock with my same telco, no problem. LTE. It is even faster than my cable broadband. Battery life seems longer, but that could be because it is new, compared to my 2-3 year old 3GS, and my iPhone 4, before it self destructed. Auto brightness dimming feature seems more responsive than on my 3GS. It reacts to changes in lighting conditions almost instantly. Areas which seemed to have worsened: Volume control buttons. You really have to touch them to believe them. They feel just like the plastic used in Gundam model kits and not the solid plastic used on my 3GS. No more GSM. Only option under settings is 4G or 3G. Can no longer switch to GSM to extend battery life. Headphone port is now on the bottom. Illogical, and it makes covering it much harder. No iRadio. Apparently iRadio is a US only thing, so I guess I will continue paying Spotify. iOS 7 related rant: One of my apps has no update for iOS 7 and now crashes intermittently. Something to consider if you use your mobile for work like me...
I will have to try one in store and see what the buttons feel like. Hopefully they are more durable than perhaps they feel. My question is what happens next year? Will there be an iPhone 6 and an iPhone 5cs??? Thanks for the impressions!
I'm curious about iWorks as well. I've got a 5s being delivered in a couple days, so I should be able to get the iWorks apps for that device. What I'm curious about, is whether that will allow me to get them for free on my iPad4 (which I got upon release) as well? Right now they are listed as $9.99 each in the app store. It appears that I should be able to, based on them being cross-platform apps. Once I've downloaded them on the phone, I should be able to get them from the Cloud on my iPad. But, we'll see. I'll give you an update in a couple days when my 5s arrives.
Yup, after you click Free->Install on your 5c/5s, the apps get tied to your account moments later, and you can download them wherever you'd like. My main thought after owning the 5s for several days is that the fingerprint sensor is amazingly convenient, and I don't think I can go back to manual 4-digit PIN and iTunes passwords. In terms of performance, not many apps can currently take advantage of the 5s's extra power, but I guess that will come with time. For the moment, though, there seems to be a lot of newer games that forgo anti-aliasing, which is a rather low hanging fruit in the GPU-pushing department. I'm not sure if each game has an internal white list that the 5s will eventually be added to or if the developers simply gave up on optimizing for MSAA halfway through development. Either way, I've sent a few polite emails and tweets asking them to reconsider the situation.
Are you talking about Retina? Some folks in the iOS 7 thread are saying their phones (not necessarily 5s/5c) are having that issue too. Either apps need an update, or there is a bug in iOS 7 that will get fixed. Or both.
I didn't like the looks of Apple's 5c cases either. However, if you are looking for a case, there's already a bunch of good looking 3rd party cases available for the the 5c, and more are sure to be coming soon. I've never been a big fan of taking such a fine looking device and masking it in a brick of protection, so I tend to go for the less obtrusive shells (often clear) that only prevent minor dings and scratches. But, there's a variety of options out there at many protection levels to suit everyone's needs. And for the most part, they're significantly cheaper than the 5c cases Apple is marketing.
Having a lot harder time finding an iPhone 5s then I thought I was, I've pretty much called everywhere for the past 2 days
You're probably not going to have any luck for awhile. Best bet at this point is to order on Apple's website and wait for delivery (or pay outrageous prices on eBay). Finding them in stock over the next month or so will be very difficult, and will possibly require a sacrifice in color choice, provided you have a preference.
Not an option, I have to trade in my old phone, not gunna pay $550 outta pocket. I could honestly careless about color, as long as I get a 32gb model. Apple stores are supposedly getting daily stock so I'm just gunna call everyday
Gotcha, that does limit your options. Fortunately you've got Apple stores nearby, so you may have better results than folks relying on cellular stores and Best Buy type locations who are likely getting much shorter supplies. Best of luck! Just keep trying.
Yeah haha, I'm quite fortunate to have 3-4 Apple stores nearby, I have a bunch of Best Buys an Targets too so I'm hoping to snag one by the end of the week.
Just tracked down some iPhones at an Apple Store nearby, will report back when I get back, hopefully with some pictures
This guy at my workplace might buy my iPhone 5 off me next week. He just wants to clarify with his wife. I sold my 4S to his wife. He might take my ip5.. Then I can get the 5S outright. But I need your help folks in deciding what color to get it in. It's a toss up between space grey & gold. I don't want white. I'm only thinking of gold, because of the hype... What would you choose? Tbh... I think the novelty of gold will wear off eventually, black/darker color is timeless IMO.
Everyone I know is getting the gold 5S, so the only question is do you want to blend in (get gold), or stand out?
Tough question. I like the premium look of the gold iPhone. But I think gaming on it will be too distracting. Also the white color around the screen makes the 4" screen seem deceptively smaller than a - all-black front. I'll have to think about this further.
If you don't want white, you don't want gold. The gold has just as much white as the silver. So, if I were you, I'd go with space grey. I had the same thoughts about the gold. It's neat now, and it's certainly very popular, but I don't think that's a color I want on my phone long term. I will say that it's a very good shade choice by Apple, meaning that it's not overly bright and gaudy, but a little more subdued and calm. That would certainly make it more palatable over longer periods of time, imo. But still I chose not to get gold. I've been really happy for two years with my white 4s, which also matches my iPad4, so I decided to get the 5s that most closely matched them, and that was the silver model. Just got it delivered yesterday, and it's exactly what I hoped for. Here's some unboxing pics I took (probably should've picked a spot with a little better lighting, but oh well).
