iPhones: Apple’s newest offerings

The company that “gave birth to the smartphone era” is finding it very hard to improve on the iPhone, said Matt Buchanan in NewYorker.com. Apple’s two new iPhone models “are just slightly better” than the iPhone 5, disappointing analysts and fanboys hoping for something more innovative and exciting. The $650 iPhone 5s features “a built-in fingerprint scanner to replace passwords, faster chips, a higher-quality camera, and a gold body.” For about $100 less, customers can buy an iPhone 5c, which is “essentially the exact same as the current iPhone 5, but shoved into a brightly colored plastic, rather than aluminum, shell.” Critics are calling the new offerings underwhelming, but the fundamental technology of the smartphone is now so sophisticated that “until a truly radical breakthrough in computing technology occurs, there is not much left to improve on.”

A breakthrough could still come—“whether or not Apple delivers it,” said Richard Waters in the Financial Times. Take smartphones’ personal assistant software. Apple’s Siri still leaves a lot to be desired, but Google has been using its “smart” software to build a handset that can learn how “to anticipate your next move.” And there’s still plenty “to be done in making smartphones fit painlessly into everyday life.” Although gadgets like Samsung’s new smartwatch and Google Glass are moving in that direction, the conventional smartphone is still “the center of this expanding personal digital universe.”

If you’re an iPhone devotee, paying the extra $100 for the 5s “is a no-brainer,” said David Carnoy in CNET.com. For starters, the 5s features a faster, A7 64-bit processor; it’s almost twice as fast as the iPhone 5. The 5s also features a much-improved camera, with better flash, slow-motion video capture, and a burst mode that allows continuous rapid shots. The 5s is also slightly lighter, and features the fingerprint scanner. The 5c has the same processor and camera as the iPhone 5 and isn’t dramatically cheaper. So “for me, the choice is easy. The iPhone 5c isn’t worth buying.”

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Who is the 5c for, anyway? asked Darren Murph in Engadget.com. Early rumors suggested the iPhone 5c would be a low-cost device, meant to help Apple crack the smartphone market in countries where carrier subsidies are less common. But “the iPhone 5c is a high-margin device, just like every other phone that Apple has ever built.” Apple’s real goal, it seems, is “to make the iPhone lively again” for consumers who have grown bored. The colorful new model “isn’t for feature-phone users in emerging markets” or “spec hounds.” It’s just “a marketing tool to get the masses to pay attention to the iPhone name.”