
The iPhone 5s Review - glasshead969
http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review
======
corporalagumbo
I find Apple so incredibly impressive. They target a few key features with
every release, absolutely nail those features, and sell the new products
perfectly. Their product line-ups and messages are constantly evolving, but
slowly, determinedly. And so they achieve things no other company seems
capable of - like an unlocking mechanism that is going to be market-defining.
Why? Because when the other companies become jealous and try and come up with
their own versions, they'll rush and release something half-baked, and out of
the confusion only Apple's solution will speak to consumers. Apple is so far
ahead of the competition it's ridiculous - maybe Google can compete in the
medium-term, I'm not sure. Apple's confidence and poise is awe-inspiring.

~~~
ajross
Not responding to the fawning per se, but specifically the "unlocking
mechanism that is going to be market-defining": face unlock seems undeniably
cooler still, works reasonably well, has been shipping on all Android phones
for _nearly two years now_ , yet certainly hasn't "defined" any markets.

How exactly is putting a little scanner inside a button going to be
meaningfully better? Like face unlock, it's at best a cute trick. Apple's past
genius has been about finding new _fundamental_ ways to use technology.
Slightly easier protection against spousal snooping doesn't qualify, sorry.

~~~
flyosity
I remember when two of my friends got Android phones that were face
unlockable. First thing we did was hold up an iPhone with a picture of their
face to it and it worked to unlock the phone! We tried this a bunch of times
and it worked every time. I don't know if the technology still sucks like it
did about a year ago but I have a feeling that Touch ID will not be foiled as
easily.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
They updated it to check for a blink, but even the android phones that had a
fingerprint scanner a few years ago, and made by the same company Apple later
bought, isn't getting any respect so clearly any non-Apple approved security
engineering decisions are _declasse_.

~~~
Bud
More trolling from you, just like elsewhere in this thread. As you are no
doubt well-aware, Apple's fingerprint scanner is not at all the same
technology as the Android phones of the last few years, which all, without
exception, use the type of sensor you must swipe your finger across. These are
less reliable, less fast in recognition, and less secure.

------
mirsadm
Interestingly enough the GPU is approximately the same speed as the upcoming
(or current?) generation of Android phones with the Snapdragon 800 SOC. In the
past Apple has generally held a large performance advantage in that area.
There is potential that in 6 months when the next Galaxy/HTC phones are
released that they will be significantly ahead of Apple for 6 or more months.

~~~
gilgoomesh
As Anandtech points out: the iPhone 5s' PowerVR Series 6 moves to a fully
scalar architecture (allowing better shaders and GPGPU performance) but loses
a lot of raw triangle performance in the process (30-50% slower than iPhone 5
in some cases). On shader heavy scenes (T-Rex HD) the tradeoff is worth it
(iPhone 5s is 30% faster than any other GPU).

Apple (and PowerVR) have made a couple tradeoffs in this generation that
sacrifice performance on some tests for better shader capabilities.

Final point: it'll be interesting to see what these numbers look like when the
bugs in the different graphics tests are resolved (are they compiled using the
armv8 instruction set?)

~~~
flakmonkey
That 30% faster figure is because the iPhone is rendering the scene at a lower
resolution than many of the phones with larger, 1080p screens. Look at the
next graph where each phone is rendering a 1080p scene to see the difference.

------
mmariani
""" ...but if Apple doesn’t offer a larger display option soon then I believe
it will lose some users not because of cross shopping, but out of frustration.
"""

I don't get this huge screen trend for phones. That's not a smart move from an
ergonomics perspective. Almost person person that has a phone with a big
screen has to use both hands to comfortably use the phone, one to touch and
the other to hold.

One would argue that more pixels == more content. But that's not an issue with
iPhone 5 even though was with previous models. I mean, not an issue if you
don't have ads taking up your precious pixels. And that is easily solvable by
paying for your content and apps which has other benefits too.

Anyway, I feel the iPhone 5 screen size is perfect. And I still have one hand
free to do whatever I want. I think more pixels are not more useful than a
hand. People who think that too won't get phones with cumbersome screens,
unless they have huge hands.

~~~
vijucat
Almost everything looks better on my wife's bigger Galaxy Note 2 screen
compared to my Galaxy S2 screen. I can see more TODOs in my toodledo.com task
manager (my primary usage), you can read more without scrolling in your
browser, YouTube videos are a pleasure; it's like you're traveling with a
mini-home-theater that can fit in your pocket, and using the stylus to make
handwritten notes is actually practical.

I hardly notice the issue of having to use two hands to hold the phone. On the
other hand, if you have to look at your phone while walking, which is
uncomfortable when using a smaller screen and dangerous (bumping into people;
maybe even uncivil towards others, come to think of it), the larger text on a
larger screen makes it more comfortable and you get done taking a glance at
what you want more quickly.

In the US, unlike here in Hong Kong, there seems to be a stigma attached to
holding a large screen phone, almost as if people are extremely worried about
looking uncool. In Hong Kong, the recognition of the practical advantages of
the larger screen and the shift away from Apple to Android phones was
overnight; the pace at which everyone adopted the Galaxy Note 2 (and other
Android phones) after the iPhone 5 was fairly dramatic. I wish there were some
statistics on this.

------
DustinCalim
Reading through the comments here, I see a lot of reference to GPU speeds.
Anand mentions in the article that the new iPhone 5s is more powerful than the
2010 Macbook Air 11" and has more graphics performance than the iPad 4. I used
to be one of those guys who would build his own PC and spend hours
overclocking everything for the maximum performance gain but I do not
understand this;

What's the infatuation with performance in a cell phone?

Snappy is snappy but there are diminishing returns here past a certain point;
I think Anand stated it best when he said it is "the most future-proof of any
iPhone ever launched"

~~~
kalleboo
Phones haven't quite reached the point that desktop computers have. With a
desktop, a 5 year old machine today is still completely useable even with the
latest software. Meanwhile, a 5 year old phone is the original iPhone. This
generation of phones might be the beginning of that era, but the increased
performance in phones is still enabling new features that weren't possible
before (full res burst with image evaluation, 120fps video editing, etc).

If it's true that the iPhone 5s of today matches or exceeds the performance of
a laptop from 5 years ago, that could mean we're not long away from full-
featured convergence devices (plug your phone into a monitor+keyboard to turn
it into a complete PC)

~~~
numbsafari
It runs about as fast as a Core2 Duo 2.4GHz from 2010, which was used that
year in the Mac Mini.

So, yeah, we're there.

------
cromwellian
Personally, I prefer proximity unlock, I shouldn't have to touch the phone at
all. This might be done with Bluetooth LE devices, the same way modern keyless
entry works for cars.

If my phone is within a meter or two of my keychain, or I'm in my car, then it
is unlocked. This is especially important if you want to use it while driving
via voice and don't want to have to unlock after each interaction.

Ditto for Moto-X style notifications. I shouldn't have to press the home
button to see that tweet that just came in, in fact, I should be able to ask
the phone to read it to me, through my headphones.

The fingerprint scanner is definitely a step up from 2-N touches (swipe to
unlock + passcode), 1 touch is better than 2*, but zero touches is even better
in some circumstances. Never having to think about needing to unlock.

~~~
calibwam
The number one place I would want security on my phone, would be at a bar (or
party), where someone might take my phone when I'm distracted, and then doing
either something innocent ("lol. im gay. party hard!!!") or nasty (transfer
$100 to own account), depending how well I know them. This could easily be
done within a meter or two of me, without me noticing. Adding some rules could
be nice (be in car, charging at home etc), but generally, I would want my
phone to be locked unless I'm holding it.

~~~
kalleboo
That's what I'm worried about with Touch ID. The new "draw a penis on
someone's forehead when they're passed out" is going to be "unlock their
iPhone with their finger and post things on their Facebook".

------
twodayslate
This is one of the most thorough reviews I have ever seen. I loved all the
information and benchmarks.

~~~
eigenvector
AnandTech = reviews for engineers. The use of actual lab-bench display testing
alone puts them in a category of their own.

~~~
ibrahima
By engineers, for engineers, I might add. No offense, but most writers on tech
sites tend to be writers who are interested in technology, whereas AnandTech
is full of engineers who are interested in dissecting and explaining
technology. Not to pick on anyone, but if you gave the writers at The Verge,
for instance, a month to review the iPhone 5S they would not cover the depth
that the first page of this review covers.

------
marincounty
I miss Steve Jobs. I once remember him saying something like,'I'm a little
worried about Cook; he's not a gadget guy.'

Did anyone notice during the Apple press conference, the head honchos tried to
capture Steve's enthusiasm, but it seemed forced?

I don't understand why they are making such a big deal out of multiple colors?
I guess it's a calculated marketing decision? Maybe they think the Iphone will
end up a fashion statement? Sorry, but I don't think Job's would care about
different colors, or a fingerprint scan--at this point in history. I'm pretty
sure hackers will find a way around around the scan pretty quick? Out of
respect for Jobs, I'm more than content with my Iphone 4, and my Ipad 2. They
get the job done, and their still perfect for my needs. I don't think I'll buy
another mac book pro for a long time. I have a feeling I'll be able to buy
parts forever?

~~~
allsystemsgo
If you watch the keynote when the mac came in different colors, you'll see he
emphasizes their new see through body and colors just as much as apple is
emphasizing the iPhone 5C's colors.

In fact, Apple had a poster with all the different colored macs in a circle,
and below that it just said "Yum".

Steve Jobs said Tim Cook isn't so much of a product guy, correct. But that was
Steve's opinion. I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment.

And out of respect for jobs you're sticking with dated technology? I don't
quite understand... If he were alive he'd probably push you to update your
device.

------
Marazan
Fingerprint scanning is yet more evidence that the iPhone was designed in
sunny south California rather than chilly northern Europe.

Resistive touch screen may not allow multi-touch, but at least I can use them
when wearing gloves (and no - gloves with a capacitive finger tip don't
count).

~~~
vacri
Noseprint?

~~~
actionscripted
It allows for 5 stored "fingers", so you could set things up for each thumb,
each index finger and your nose. Assuming there aren't any security issues
about using a nose -- and that you're not worried about security much anyways
-- you should be golden. How unique are nose prints?

------
pbreit
5S definitely a nice upgrade and I don't see any reason to get a 5C beyond
color and slight battery life advantage (presumably on non-motion usage).
Saving $100 on a $2,000+ service contract is nothing.

But I'm super disappointed that Apple didn't target 5S battery life for
dramatic improvement. The 5's battery life is already awful and it looks like
5S is even worse. Ugh.

~~~
sandipc
[http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-
iphone-5s-review/9](http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/9)

with the exception of cellular talk time, the 5 and 5S are near the top...

~~~
sliverstorm
Gee, silly me, caring about the cellular talk time on my phone. That's the
_last_ thing anyone should use a phone for.

~~~
EpicEng
You talk on your phone for 9.3+ hours /day between charges? That sucks, I'm
sorry.

------
cpprototypes
Does anyone else think like we're already in the "core 2 duo" era of
smartphones? I look at my galaxy s3 and the newer phones and don't feel much
motivation to upgrade.

~~~
bobbles
In the daringfireball.net review Gruber specifically mentions in benchmarking
the 5s outperforms the 2008 15" macbook that he has.

It's hard for me to justify from a 'need' perspective to go from my 4S to the
5s, since to be honest the 4S has no slowdown at all and is a great phone.

I'll probably end up donating it to my mum and moving her from dumbphone into
smartphone land.

------
glhaynes
Supposing A-series chip performance continues to improve at the rate it has
been, how long until an Apple TV with the then-current high-end A chip puts
games on a TV of the same quality as current-gen video game systems? What
about next-gen?

~~~
flakmonkey
The GPU in the PS4 is, essentially, an Nvidia 7900-class GPU. Anandtech
recently did a comparison of old PC GPUs to current SOCs and the results are
surprisingly close. I'd imagine Snapdragon 800 and Oscar close the gap
considerably. [http://anandtech.com/show/6877/the-great-equalizer-
part-3/3](http://anandtech.com/show/6877/the-great-equalizer-part-3/3)

edit: I'm stuck in past. This comment is about PS3 not PS4.

~~~
Impossible
The PS4 GPU is significantly more powerful (orders of magnitude) than an
Nvidia 7900 class GPU, unless you meant PS3 or Radeon 7900 series :).

~~~
flakmonkey
Thanks for the correction.

------
Hillary_Pe
Only 1GB RAM?! bah humbug

~~~
kylelibra
I was hoping they had finally bumped it up to 2gb, but I guess not. I often
read this is related to battery life, can anyone corroborate?

~~~
jevinskie
DRAM requires periodic refreshing or the cells lose their memory. This
refreshing uses energy. More bits, more energy. You get the same issue with
SRAM (think CPU caches) though without the refreshing.

------
seertaak
Any ARM experts around? The sagacity of the move to 64-bit is explained in
terms of getting rid of cruft, and via analogy to a similar move by Intel on
the x86 line. But I thought that the largest boost to that line comes from the
many additional registers available under 64 bit mode. In ARM, with its RISC
architecture, there are already a nice number of registers, so I'm wondering
where the true advantage lies -- especially an environment of strongly
constrained memory.

~~~
pja
Yes, the biggest boost to x86 performance in the move to 64 bit came mostly
because they doubled the number of regsiters available to what was previously
a very register poor ISA.

The ARM ISA has different legacy issues: the design makes it much more
expensive than it otherwise would be to pipeline the CPU in order to get
decent performance. The ISA was designed for an in-order CPU: at the time
pipelining was something that mainframe / workstation class CPUs did. (ARM was
designed in the very early 80s; Intel released a pipelined CPU in 1989 - the
486, and then only for simple instructions.)

For instance, every ARM32 assembly instruction has a bunch of condition codes
which determine whether to execute the instruction depending on the state of
the status bits in the program counter. You can also determine whether a given
instruction will set the relevant status bits in the processor. This means you
can do nice things like encode an if (R2 < 0) then (Add 1 to R3) else (Add 1
to R4) in just three instructions: one for the test, an instruction if the
relevant flag is set & a second instruction to run if it's not set. No
branches! You can also branch on any or all of the condition flags. This makes
for very compact code. The trouble is that it's hell to pipeline because you
have to keep track of all the possible states of the status bits and follow
all the possible branch paths that result, whilst keeping track of all the
dependencies.

They've also done things like simplify the exception handling so that the CPU
needs fewer shadow registers, which again reduces power requirements.

~~~
pja
RealWorldTech has a good article here:
[http://www.realworldtech.com/arm64/](http://www.realworldtech.com/arm64/) if
anyone wants to do a slightly deeper dive into the ARM64 ISA.

------
sideproject
what an EXCELLENT review. Seriously. The author went through so much detail.
It's ridiculous how thorough this review is - loved it. Thank you.

~~~
jordanthoms
As usual for Anandtech - by far the best review site around, at least for the
technology side of devices.

~~~
dragontamer
I wouldn't call it "by far" the best. TechReport IMO has taken a similar style
of super-duper in-depth reviews. Phoronix is the only review site that does
this kind of in-depth review... except from a Linux-slant. (how good are the
drivers for various graphics cards. Which CPU offers the best compile times,
etc. etc.)

What CNet lacks in depth, it gains in breadth. CNet has far far more reviews
of decent quality than any other site I know. In comparison, the few reviews
that Anandtech / TechReport do are _far far_ deeper than anything from CNet.

I think overall, I prefer TechReport over Anandtech.

------
blinkingled
Looking at the benchmarks - the A7 SoC is a pretty darn great achievement for
Apple! And more than that it is a serious threat to Intel given it is within
striking distance of 22nm Bay Trail at 28nm and two less cores!

If they continue this - the next gen MacBook Airs will be running the A8 or
even A7x with full day battery life. Intel better have something disruptive up
their sleeves!

~~~
arrrg
Current MacBook Airs already get full-day battery life. Apple/ARM and Intel
are quickly converging from two sides – but the cost of switching
architectures (while something Apple certainly has been quite good at in the
past) seems too high to me for the payoff, and that’s even if, spec for spec,
ARM could beat out Intel. Add to that that the relationship of Apple with
Intel seems to be a quite good one (so there is no reason for petty politics)
and I really don’t see it happening.

24 hour battery life (instead of 12) and half the performance in a MacBook Air
seems hardly worth it to me. To my mind that device is already more
constrained by performance than battery life.

(Conversely I also don’t see ARM/Apple getting too slow to keep pace with
Intel on the mobile side, so I don’t see them switching there to Intel,
either.)

~~~
cremnob
Apple owns a stake in ARM and likely has more influence on their direction
than they would with Intel. Apple is fond of controlling their destiny and
that means controlling the entire stack. They might keep iOS and OSX separate
but I could definitely see them unifying hardware across all their lines as
much as possible. They avoid the margin paid to Intel and can lower costs via
scale.

e: I know they had a stake in ARM at one point, but I'm unsure if they still
do.

------
nicholassmith
I think the Anandtech reviews are one of my favourite parts of a new iOS
device launch, talk about thorough.

Interesting comment was made that the A7 seems capable of driving a larger
Retina screen than the iPhone, which gives credence to the rumour that the
next Mini will shift to Retina, if they've managed to offset the battery life
concerns as well anyway. The A7 does seem really rather impressive, I don't
know hardware as well as I'd like, but that was some fairly effusive praise in
the review.

~~~
atestu
It's not that surprising given that the A5 has been powering the iPad's retina
screen… Or am I missing something?

------
JonFish85
Focusing on the fingerprint unlock thing. I'm curious how this is going to
evolve. I wonder if this will be the new two-factor auth. If I want to log
into a website (via Safari of course) on my Macbook Pro, do I have to swipe my
finger on my iPhone? I wonder if something like this could start replacing
passwords (long-term)?

~~~
carlesfe
I read somewhere that a fingerprint couldn't replace a password, as they are
different auth methods, and the fingerprint can't really replace the password.
Does anybody know why? I searched the article but haven't been able to find
it.

~~~
ajanuary
My guess is it's referring to the "something you have", "something you are"
and "something you know" [1]

Current two-factor authentication on the web combines something you know
(password) with something you have (mobile phone with an app that generates
tokens).

The parent is suggesting this could change to something you know (password)
and something you are (fingerprint). It could easily be extended to include
something you have by combining the fingerprint with a token generator on your
iPhone.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
factor_authentication](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-
factor_authentication)

------
NicoJuicy
I thought NFC was more impressive then fingerprints ... :)

------
Scaevolus
Comparing CPU performance using Javascript benchmarks isn't very useful-- much
of the difference depends on which Javascript engine is being used.

~~~
joakleaf
Isn't it exactly a very useful benchmark if you are going to use the phone
primarily for browsing webpages with javascript on them?

------
yules
Can't wait to get my hands on one. Soon ;)

------
toksaitov
8x MSAA. Impressive.

~~~
bobbles
Does this mean AA is actually applied in games? Not quite sure what to make of
it.

~~~
toksaitov
PowerVR TBDR architecture is great at handling MSAA. I think quite a lot of
games will be able to use it (as it was with 4x)
[http://gdcvault.com/play/1015331/Bringing-AAA-Graphics-to-
Mo...](http://gdcvault.com/play/1015331/Bringing-AAA-Graphics-to-Mobile)
(~page 28)

------
goldudu
It smells like 2005 nokia to me.

------
nutanc
All I can say is that TouchID is the new Siri.

