iPhone 5c can give you colorful life better than iPhone 5s black white gold
Plastic. "Unapologetically plastic" are the words Apple has used, and that really is the essence of the iPhone 5c. Colour. Gloss. Excitement. It is set to be available in blue, white, yellow, pink and green, with a further range of case styles to add flair and make a colour combination you'll rarely see other users carrying.
The plastic casing is reinforced with a steel chassis directly underneath, so it actually feels like a tough little customer. A little thicker and heavier than the iPhone 5 (and iPhone 5s, which is the exact same weight and dimension as last year), it feels much tougher than even flagship phones with plastic cases, like the Samsung Galaxy and Note range.
The new design makes room for a slightly bigger battery, which delivers, you guessed it, slightly better performance. The new design also upgrades the front-facing camera — all the better to selfie with — and for wandering souls, it upgrades the long-term evolution chip for better worldwide performance.
But at its heart, this is a review that can keep it simple and stick to one basic idea: this is the iPhone 5 with a sassy new style.
While every iPhone 5 owner will also be getting iOS 7 as a free upgrade, it's worth noting that part of that styling means you get colour-matched wallpaper by default on the iPhone 5c. This really is a style-focused update to catch the eye of the fashion-conscious buyer.
The 5c's SunSpider performance is actually not insignificant in its improvement, which is likely chalked up to iOS 7 boosting performance on the same hardware. Directly compared with other flagship phones of 2013, Apple's 2012 hardware still performs incredibly well and better than most on the SunSpider test, so the A6 chip still stacks up to most current standards.
The iPhone 5c is not for people who read tech news websites. It's for those who want something that looks fresh and exciting from Apple even if it isn't packing the latest and greatest features in town. It is for those who want to show the world they bought something new. Whether what lies beneath that surface is new isn't a big concern.
For our purposes, this is last year's phone with a few minor upgrades and a very glossy new chassis. No other plastic-cased phone has felt so solid in the hand, and the iPhone 5 as a system is still a great phone that many users will continue to use through until the iPhone 6 arrives next year.
But Australian pricing makes this too hard to recommend. On a 24-month contract, the iPhone 5s can be yours for as little as AU$4 extra per month. There is so much power on offer for those extra dollars it should be an easy choice for anyone reading a site like ours.
If it was given to you and you had to use it, it would serve you very well. It is a fine iPhone based on hardware that we have found very powerful over the past12 months and with iOS 7 it only gets better.
But if the choice is yours, choose the 5s.
In many ways, the 5c will become a very interesting option next year when it takes its place at the bottom tier of Apple's range. When it truly becomes that "cheap" device the rumours have longed for, this design will become a very attractive proposition. But this year, it sits just a little too far up the food chain to make it a strong recommend.
Do you want the phone that has a new shell but the same CPU? Or the phone that looks the same but has some incredible new hardware under the bonnet? It will be very interesting to see what buyers decide as the phones go onRead full review
