Product Review

The iPhone 5s is Apple's 7th generation iPhone. The 5s was released on September 20 alongside iOS 7. Physically the iPhone 5s looked identical to the previous year's iPhone 5, including the 4-inch 1136x640 in-cell display. But that's been true for every s-branded phone Apple has released to date. With this phone, however, there's one notable exception. The iPhone 5s not only comes in dark and light colors, space gray and silver respectively, but it comes in gold. Also, like every s-branded phone Apple has released to date, beneath a similar-looking shell beats the heart of a much-improved beast.

iPhone 5s: Apple A7 and M7 chipsets

The iPhone 5s is powered by the 64-bit Apple A7 chip. The A7 includes a 1.3GHz dual-core custom Cyclone processor based on the ARM v8 instruction set, and a OpenGL ES 3.0-equipped PowerVR G6430 graphics processor. That means the iPhone 5s is not only one of the most advanced mobile devices on the planet but that it can run more complex apps and games faster and better than ever before. The Apple A7 architecture also includes Apple's first coprocessor, the Apple M7. The M7 collects all motion-related data - accelerometer, gyroscope, magnometer, etc. - in the background in a really power-efficent way and then shares it with iOS and apps so not only can your phone make sure your pedometer apps don't have any gaps, but can recognize when you're not moving and power down network connections to save even more power, or recognize when you get out of a car and switch you to walking directions.

iPhone 5s: Touch ID fingerprint identity sensor

Touch ID, Apple's fingerprint identity sensor, debuted with the iPhone 5s. It lets you use biometric authentication to unlock your iPhone and authorize purchases on the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBookstore.