| Specs at a glance: Apple iPhone 5C | |
|---|---|
| Screen | 1136×640 4-inch (326PPI) touchscreen |
| OS | iOS 7 |
| CPU | 1.3GHz Apple A6 |
| RAM | 1GB DDR2 |
| GPU | Imagination Technologies SGX543MP3 |
| Storage | 16 or 32GB NAND flash |
| Networking | 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Ports | Lightning connector, headphone jack |
| Size | 4.90" × 2.33" × 0.35" (124.4 × 59.2 × 8.97 mm) |
| Weight | 4.65oz (132 g) |
| Battery | 1510mAh |
| Starting price | $99 with two-year contract, $549 unlocked |
| Other perks | Charger, earbuds, Lightning cable |
For several years now, Apple has sold three iPhones at once. There's the flagship, which has the fastest internals and shiny new hardware features like fingerprint sensors and Siri. There's the free-with-contract value option, the two-year-old phone that is showing definite signs of age but keeps kicking thanks to prompt software updates. And there's the middle child, the $99-with-contract phone that's just a year removed from being Apple's latest and greatest.
The iPhone 5C is Apple's effort to draw attention to that middle tier, which can otherwise be overshadowed by the newness of the flagship phone and the value proposition of the free-with-contract phone. For all practical intents and purposes, the 5C is last year's iPhone 5 poured into a series of colorful plastic shells rather than the aluminum-and-glass of the 5 and its true successor, the iPhone 5S. However, it's being marketed differently from any other mid-tier iPhone—if you want proof, note that the 5C (and not the 5S) is the first thing you've seen if you've been to Apple's home page since the September 10 announcement.
The iPhone 5S is absolutely the model that you should be looking at if you're a contented iPhone 4S customer looking to upgrade at the end of your two-year contract. The same goes if you're a power user fleeing another operating system, looking for the absolute best that Apple has to offer. The iPhone 5C is Apple's attempt to spruce up an existing product to appeal to new and more casual iPhone buyers, perhaps even to people who bought an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4 for $99 or free-with-contract a couple of years ago and are ready to spring for something a little fancier now that it's time to upgrade. With that contextual information in mind, let's look at how the iPhone 5C fares in an increasingly crowded smartphone landscape.
Body, build quality, and screen
The short version: The iPhone 5C body is a little thicker and heavier than the 5 or 5S, but it feels very Lumia-esque in its sturdiness (watch out for scratches, though). The 4-inch screen is the exact same panel used in the iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, and fifth-generation iPod touch, which means great color, brightness, and viewing angles.
The long version: Given how inwardly similar the 5C is to last year's iPhone 5, the biggest question about it is how the new plastic shell holds up. This is Apple's first plastic iPhone since the iPhone 3GS back in 2009, and it's a definite departure after three straight years of glass-and-aluminum bodies.
My impressions from my initial hands-on time with the device still stand: the plastic of the 5C is much more in line with the rigid plastic bodies of the Lumia phones or the Moto X than with the thinner, more flimsy offerings we've seen from Samsung (and, more recently, LG). Aesthetically, the plastic shells give the 5C a different character than the staid black and silver shells of previous iPhones. While I personally am going to go for the iPhone with the most features and fastest internals, the colors will likely be a draw for more casual buyers (and it may even upsell those who walk into the store intending to get the free-with-contract iPhone 4S). The 5C tends toward lighter pastel shades rather than the darker and more saturated Lumia colors, but the overall effect is the same. Like the Lumias, every 5C comes out of the box with theming that complements the color of the rear shell.
While I expected a plastic iPhone to feel slightly lighter than the aluminum body of the iPhone 5 and 5S, the 5C is actually noticeably heavier if you're holding both phones at the same time. It's not a huge difference, but there's no mistaking it. The 5C is also thicker than the 5S by a noticeable but not staggering amount.
Now that we've gotten a look inside the 5C courtesy of iFixit, we know that the increase in weight and thickness is part of what makes the phone as sturdy as it is. Another contributing factor is that the shell is now one continuous piece of plastic rather than a couple of separate pieces as it was in the 3GS. By the time I had spent two years with that phone, the silver trim around the screen started to separate from the rear casing, and that sort of thing shouldn't be a concern in the 5C. The entire plastic surface is entirely smooth, seamless, and broken only by the phone's buttons and switches. Even the SIM tray sits perfectly flush with the side, where it protrudes slightly from the plastic body of the Moto X.
The phone feels reassuringly sturdy in your hand, but it's not perfect. One thing I noticed as I was actually carrying the phone around in a pocket or bag is that annoying little hairline scratches begin to assert themselves almost immediately. I scarcely had the phone 24 hours before a small lattice of scratches appeared on the back, and over months of usage you'll probably wear the shine off the shell unless you put it in a case. This is a problem we haven't noticed with the matte finish on the plastic Moto X.
Potential scratching issues aside, the plastic body of the 5C feels pretty good. Offering its mid-tier iPhone in different colors is a good way for Apple to diversify the iPhone lineup without actually having to change its strategy much. It gives customers something else to look at when they go to buy a phone, and it gets Apple more press than it would have gotten had it merely given the iPhone 5 a price cut. No one re-reviewed the iPhone 4S last year when it dropped to $99-with-contract, but as a "new" phone, the 5C has gotten almost as much press attention as the 5S. That's no coincidence.
Thankfully, Apple isn't playing any cost-cutting games with the display on the 5C. Back in the days of the fourth-generation iPod touch, Apple gave that device a screen with the same resolution and density as the then-new iPhone 4 albeit with visibly inferior contrast and viewing angles. Now, it doesn't matter which device you buy—the iPhone 5C, iPhone 5S, iPhone 5, and fifth-generation iPod touch all appear to be using the same bright, vivid IPS panels. Viewing angles are good, and text and Retina-optimized images remain crisp.
At this point, the 4-inch, 1136×640, 326 PPI iPhone display has been thoroughly surpassed in both size and density by competing Android handsets. This is less true for the 5C than for the 5S, however—many offerings from the likes of Samsung and HTC in the $99-with-contract arena still use four-point-something-inch displays with 1280×720 resolutions. The 4.8-inch 306 PPI Galaxy S III and the 4.3-inch 340 PPI HTC One Mini don't outgun the 5C as thoroughly as the 5-inch 1080p monsters in the $199-with-contract arena outgun the 5S, for example. You can still get bigger screens at this price point if you go with an Android handset, but the comparison isn't quite so lopsided. If you're an Apple die-hard, the 4-inch display still feels more expansive than the 3.5-inch displays used on pre-iPhone 5 models.
Our thoughts on the size of the iPhone's display in the 5C and 5S are the same: it would be nice to see Apple give its displays a small size bump, since phones like the BlackBerry Z10 and Moto X have demonstrated that it's possible to make a phone with a larger screen that is comfortable to hold and operate with one hand. In the meantime, four inches remains a workable size, and if you don't hop between phones with regularity, you probably won't miss the extra space.
Camera
The camera in the iPhone 5C uses the exact same sensor, lens assembly, and single-LED flash as last year's iPhone 5. It's an 8MP shooter with backside illumination, 1.4µm pixels, an f/2.4 aperture, and a five-element lens. The phone will still take photos about as quickly as you can tap on the shutter button, but you don't pick up the Burst Mode or Slo-Mo features introduced with the iPhone 5S camera.
This camera is a known quantity at this point, but we took the 5C out with us while we did our iPhone 5S camera testing to get a sense of how well it performed a year after its introduction. We'll provide an abbreviated version of our comparisons from the iPhone 5S review below.
The iPhone 4S. In good light, the three iPhones often take shots that look very similar, differing only slightly in sharpness and color accuracy.
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The iPhone 4S. In good light, the three iPhones often take shots that look very similar, differing only slightly in sharpness and color accuracy.
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The iPhone 5C.
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The iPhone 5S.
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The Lumia 1020 produces a sharp, colorful shot.
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The HTC One produces a soft and smeary image.
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The Galaxy S 4 does well with detail here, unlike the HTC One.
The iPhone 4S does a decent job with detail (look at the fur), but the shot is a little too warm and renders this normally gray cat pretty brown.
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The iPhone 4S does a decent job with detail (look at the fur), but the shot is a little too warm and renders this normally gray cat pretty brown.
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The 5C improves the situation somewhat.
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The 5S does a better job with color here. The shot is still just a little warm, but this is much closer to the cat's actual color.
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The Galaxy S 4 is a little softer than the 5S, but the white balance is still a bit more accurate than the 4S or the 5C.
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The HTC One takes us right back to brown and once again filters out noise a little too aggressively. It loses detail in the fur.
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The Lumia 1020 did a truly excellent job with detail, but even when tweaking the white balance settings manually, the white balance was always way off. The Auto setting renders the entire shot a sort of yellow-green.
The iPhone 4S in low light. Things are very dark and indistinct.
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The iPhone 4S in low light. Things are very dark and indistinct.
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The 5C at least improves things to the point that you can make out people.
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The 5S takes the shot from the 5C, brightens it a bit, and cleans it up. It's not as good as the Lumia 1020, but it's not bad.
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You can barely make out anything beyond the light bulbs in the S 4's picture.
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You can see things in the HTC One's shot, but it has a tendency to make things red or purple when it's too dark.
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Finally, the Lumia 1020, undisputed king of low-light smartphone camera shots.
The 5C camera still manages to outdo the cameras from previous iPhones and most Android phones even if it's no longer best-in-class. The 5S and recent Lumias will outdo it in low-light, but otherwise it's a good all-rounder that generally produces shots superior to what you'll get from most Android cameras. The 5C takes decent shots in most scenarios without requiring much thought from the user, which is all most smartphone cameras will ever be called upon to do.
Internals and performance
The short version: Apple's A6 still acquits itself well, but it can't quite keep up with those quad-core Snapdragons.
The long version: Stop us if this one sounds familiar—the iPhone 5C is pretty much an iPhone 5 inside. There's no A6 die shrink or anything to get excited about. This new plastic phone performs exactly the same as last year's flagship. Two small differences distinguish the 5C from the 5 in actual usage—the 1510 mAh battery, which is slightly larger than the 1440 mAh battery in the iPhone 5, and the Qualcomm WTR1605L transceiver, which allows the 5C to use more LTE bands than the RTR8600 from last year. The iPhone 5S also gets the WTR1605L upgrade, but both phones' Qualcomm MDM9615M modems will cap transfer speeds at a theoretical maximum of 100Mbps rather than the 150Mbps supported by LTE Advanced-capable phones like the Galaxy S 4. The iPhone 5 also used an MDM9615M, so LTE speeds between the 5 and the 5C will be similar if not identical.
Let's briefly recap what else the 5 and the 5C brings to the table: the Apple A6 chip brings two 32-bit ARM CPU cores based on Apple's custom "Swift" architecture that max out somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.3GHz. It also includes 1GB of 1066MHz LPDDR2 RAM on a 64-bit dual-channel interface and a triple-core PowerVR SGX 543MP3 GPU. Finally, it has either 16GB or 32GB of storage, dual-band 802.11n, and Bluetooth 4.0.
To evaluate the 5C's performance, we've included charts from our iPhone 5S review comparing the 5C to high-end iOS and Android devices. We've also included a second set of graphs that may be useful for the 5C's target audience: people who are upgrading from an older iPhone (in this case, we've included the iPhone 4) and people who are also contemplating a $99-with-contract Android phone.
The A6 is still faster than dual-core Snapdragons in both single- and multi-core tests.
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The A6 is still faster than dual-core Snapdragons in both single- and multi-core tests.
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The GPU also holds up well compared to the midrange S III.
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Phones using last-generation dual-core Snapdragon chips (the S III and HTC One Mini both fall into this camp, as the Mini's Snapdragon 400 is essentially a rebranded Snapdragon S4 Plus) are easily outclassed by the A6's CPU and GPU. The situation at this price point will change over the course of the next year as faster quad-core chips like the Snapdragon S4 Pro and possibly even the Snapdragon 600 begin to trickle down. The high-end charts show the extent to which the A6 can be outclassed by those more powerful chips (as well as the A7 in the iPhone 5S).
The 5C is outgunned by the faster quad-core Snapdragons. The 5S outruns them all.
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The 5C is outgunned by the faster quad-core Snapdragons. The 5S outruns them all.
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64-bit Safari running on the iPhone 5S is much, much faster than anything else.
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64-bit Safari running on the iPhone 5S is much, much faster than anything else.
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These browser benchmarks give a great, high-level view of how SoC performance has progressed.
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Battery life
The short version: iPhone 5C battery life is marginally better than the 5 and 5S.
The long version: Since before our iOS 7 review ran, I've been running battery tests on an iPhone 5 running iOS 7 over and over again to try to get a handle on its apparent battery life issues. For those of you who didn't make it to the end, every single iOS 6 device we tested (including an iPad 2 tested independently by Associate Writer Casey Johnston for another article) posted a slight loss in battery life in iOS 7 when performing our Wi-Fi browsing battery life test. The iPhone 5 lost over three hours of use in iOS 7 compared to the exact same phone running iOS 6—seven hours and 44 minutes compared to 11 hours and one minute. Our test loops a series of pages continuously in Safari every 15 seconds until the phone dies—it's not exactly a common real-world use case, but it's a simple and repeatable test that yields reasonably consistent results.
After reading this ExtremeTech writeup of our findings and several comments and reader e-mails asking whether the drop could be attributed to this-or-that specific iOS 7 feature, I began experimenting with a few different things. My first item of business was to find and test an AT&T model iPhone 5, which ran the test for eight hours exactly—slightly improved, but in the same ballpark as the Verizon phone we originally tested. I disabled the Background App Refresh feature and ran the test on the Verizon phone again, which yielded no significant improvements. I ran the test with the phone's SIM completely removed and cellular data disabled, again with no significant change to the results.
By changing the series of pages our test loads, I was able to get the Verizon iPhone 5 to post an improved result of eight hours and 34 minutes. That's still short of our 11 hour figure in iOS 6, the official Apple-provided estimate of 10 hours, and AnandTech's 10.27 hours in its own iOS 6 Wi-Fi browsing test. The upshot of all of this is that, like many mobile battery life issues, the problems the iPhone 5 seems to be having are hard to nail down and workload-dependent. For those of you who aren't having issues, we hope it stays that way. For those of you who are, we'll continue to pay attention to this as Apple begins to issue updates for iOS 7.
As for the iPhone 5C itself, our AT&T model ran the modified Wi-Fi browsing test for eight hours and 50 minutes, a step up from the iPhone 5's figure that is probably attributable to its slightly larger battery. This is still short of Apple's advertised 10 hours, but it compares favorably to the AT&T Galaxy S III (six hours and 27 minutes) and the iPhone 5S (eight hours and 37 minutes) running the same test.
The Amazing Technicolor iPhone
Apple's new mainstream marketing push aside, the most interesting implication of the iPhone 5C is the one I've been thinking about since the phone began to look plausible: Apple now has two separate iPhones that it can theoretically update at the same time, giving the company the opportunity to let new technology trickle down more quickly. The iPhone 5C isn't exactly an iPhone 5; it's an iPhone 5 that includes the upgraded LTE hardware and FaceTime camera from the 5S. The system board looks more like the 5S' board than the 5's. Apple buys components in such great quantities that using some of the same upgraded components in both phones may be cheaper for Apple than continuing to buy older parts from prior years' phones.
Consider the iPod touch. When the iPhone 5 and the A6 SoC were introduced last year, the iPhone 4-like fourth-generation model was thrown out in favor of a new one. That iPod used an A5 SoC very much like the iPhone 4S. However, instead of using that phone's 3.5-inch screen and 30-pin dock connector, the iPod picked up the same 4-inch display and Lightning connector that the iPhone 5 came with. If a hypothetical iPhone 6 arrives next year with new features like LTE Advanced, 802.11ac, or maybe even a larger screen, Apple is free to bring as much of that down to the "C" series phones as it wants instead of keeping each phone exactly as it is and cutting $100 from the price.
That's the 5C in a nutshell. Apple's positioning and marketing of the phone and its implications for the future are ultimately more noteworthy than this particular phone itself. That's not to say it's a bad phone by any stretch. Minor component differences aside, it's mostly an iPhone 5 in a colorful plastic shell. It's only technically "new," but that may be as new as it needs to be.
The good
- The iPhone 5's hardware has aged pretty well, and even without internal changes the 5C is competitive with similarly priced offerings from other companies
- The plastic bodies are very sturdy and add character
- Camera is still pretty good overall, though low-light performance is mediocre
The bad
- Phone's speaker is noticeably muffled-sounding compared to the 5 and 5S
- Some will find the plastic body a downgrade from the original iPhone 5's aluminum one
The ugly
- That pretty shell is scratch-prone
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