Meet the two newest members of Apple’s iPhone family: a much faster, fully 64-bit iPhone 5S, and the iPhone 5C, essentially a tweaked iPhone 5 available in multiple colors. Both phones will launch simultaneously on September 20. Apple revealed the phones during a press event at its corporate campus in Cupertino, California on Tuesday afternoon.
Apple claims the iPhone 5S is up to twice as fast for both CPU and graphics and says the new A7 processor housed within includes over a billion transistors — twice as many as the A6 processor in the iPhone 5, while retaining the same footprint (iOS 7 has apparently been updated to take advantage of the new 64-bit architecture, too). The iPhone 5S will be available in black, gold or silver colors.
The iPhone 5S also includes something Apple calls an M7 motion co-processor, which keeps tabs on the device’s accelerometer, gyroscope and compass. Apple says this will enable new types of health and fitness apps, such as a new Nike+ Move app that keeps track of how active you are.
As expected, the iPhone 5S will include a touch ID fingerprint sensor built into the Home button. It’ll scan fingerprints in any orientation as well as sub-dermal fingerprint layers, and Apple noted you can use it to unlock your phone without a PIN or make iTunes purchases without entering a password. Lest you worry that data’s being stored in the cloud, Apple confirmed it’s not backed up or stored on Apple’s servers, and that it’s encrypted and locked within the A7 chip — it’s not directly accessible by software.
