The recently released iPhone 5S has definitely caught eyeballs of general users and techies alike. Apart from delivering a promising device, Apple has gone a step further and stuffed it with goodies that will cater to all our whims and fancies. To truly understand the situation that surrounds Apple as of now, we need to understand the past that clearly states how Samsung's Galaxy series with its S3 and S4 thwarted the iPhone 5 and HTC One carved a comfortable place for itself, leaving Apple facing a ton of flak for delivering a below-par smartphone. Dwindling sales figures and the soaring Android market definitely put some heat on Apple. Keen on breaking through the scepticism, Apple put its act together and delivered to us a smartphone that looks and acts like it is tailored by the imagineers at Apple. But numbers do matter at the end of it all, right? Time to pull up the stats and see how the 5S fares in the rat race.
The Outer Shell
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A clarification before we start off. Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple faced heat for increasing the screen size of the iPhone, something that clearly went against the principles of Steve Jobs. Jobs, for one, stated that an obnoxiously large screen is cumbersome and unnecessary for a smartphone. Albeit, that was the past, and as for what we see today, smartphone makers are busy flattening their smartphones while making them larger than ever before. Keeping that in mind, the iPhone 5S retains the similar shell as that of the iPhone 5, a simple 4 inch LCD screen that does the job of dishing out bright and vivid graphics for a user's satisfaction. Compared to that, the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a massive 5 inch screen with the trademark AMOLED screen and HTC with its 4.7 inch LCD. All the smartphones flaunt an impressive screen, but does the size really matter? Smartphones have lost their tag of being ergonomic, and yet somehow Apple has retained the sanity to keep the size static. And since the size remains the same, so will the overall weight. The 5S comes up to be lighter than the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. So a point for Apple.
The Power
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Apple was known to give us a powerful device, but the new wave of Android smartphones with their octacore processors shook up some ground. Thankfully for Apple, it had a trick up its sleeve, which worked fashionably well for itself. Apple wanted to deliver a hi-powered device, and for that, they ripped out the heart of a desktop computer, a 64 bit chipset, and put it right into the 5S. Yes, the 5S has a A7 64-bit chipset that makes it twice as faster as its predecessor in terms of usage and graphics. If that wasn't enough, the motion sensing technology is handled by a whole new chip altogether, lifting off a bit of weight from the A7 chip's shoulders. While the 5S is a desktop PC on your palm, the Galaxy S4 is a Quadcore processor that clocks in at 1.9 GHz. A fairly powerful chip, but one that pales in comparison to the 5S. The HTC One shares a similar fate as it has a Quadcore processor shy of delivering its optimum power by giving us 1.7 GHz of it. We can only gauge the power that lies inside the A7 and a thorough burn-test might help us cement the facts further, but by looks, the iPhone 5S with its 64-bit A7 chipset strides right ahead of the competition.
Storage And Battery
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Apple users happen to grudgingly comply with the company's norms at delivering a device without expendable storage. Mobile devices at a time had an unwritten rule of giving a memory slot for the storage hungry masses. All that changed to a certain extent with cloud storage coming into play, but that might not be the case on a global level. People still crave for more. Keeping that in mind, the iPhone 5S comes in the typical variants of 16, 32, and 64 GB, albeit without a slot. As opposed to that, the Samsung Galaxy S4 gives similar variants with expansion capabilities. Unfortunately, HTC One falters in this one with 32 and 64 GB variants without any slot. Winner, the Galaxy S4.
Smartphone manufacturers are hell-bent on pumping more power into their smartphone, cramming the smallest and the most powerful chips out there. And yet, amidst this entire clamour, they simply tend to forget the power it needs to sustain the smartphone. In the past, mobile phones were capable of running for a day while still saving some battery at the end of it all. As opposed to that, the current range of smartphones fails to work for a day of heavy usage. Same has been the case with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. The S4 with its 2600 mAh and the One with 2300 mAh gives you a day's worth of use. Compared to that, the iPhone 5S has a minuscule 1434 mAh of juice. With a powerful chipset to run this machine, we doubt how the 5S will run, but Apple assures us that the phone gives 10 hours of surfing with a full charge. At this point, nobody seems to be a winner, but we hope Apple delivers what it claims.
The Camera
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This is tricky. For a unit that has baffled smartphone users since its inception in the market, people are still trying to figure out what the megapixels truly denote. Simply put, the value of the number does not matter. A lens with its image capturing is solely dependent on the size of the sensor that is nested inside. Holding that thought, HTC One flaunts a 4 MegaPixel camera which is clubbed with HTC's very own Ultrapixel technology. Samsung on the other hand has a flashy 13 Megapixel camera with the glitz and glamour the Samsung OS provides. Comparatively, the iPhone 5S has an 8 Megapixel camera with a large aperture and a dual LED flash and the ability to shoot 120 fps videos in high definition. Yet again, we're left in the dark for now, but the numbers seem to look and sound right for the iPhone 5S. We'll still give it a draw among the three.
Overall Stats
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Samsung blew everyone's mind away with the way they had tweaked Android and moulded it around the phone to make it work like a charm. The added goodies were a delight to see and the phone promised what it delivered. Android had truly arrived with the Samsung Galaxy series. HTC soon followed and delivered a well-polished Android smartphone. Apple desperately needed a makeover and they did just that with the iOS 7. It may not have a monumental change from its predecessor, but it did refine and fine-tune the discrepancies that were persistent. This time around though, Apple took it a step further and added fingerprint scanning to the OS and changed the gameplay altogether, leaving the competition in a heap of dust. Points for Apple for their ingenious technological implementation? Definitely.
The Price
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Pricing always proves to be the tipping point for various users and manufacturers. Apple set a trademark for delivering high-end smartphones that were meant to burn a hole in your pocket. Various other manufacturers followed suite and pushed the envelope further. While all these smartphones are priced in a similar range, the iPhone's variants come at $199 for 16GB, $299 for 32GB, $399 for 64GB. The Galaxy S4 at $199.99 for 16GB, $299.99 for 32GB; and the HTC One at $199. Without putting much thought into it, the iPhone 5S is a clear winner for the power and capability it packs as a whole. Add to that the snazzy looks and we have a clear-cut winner!
The smartphones flaunt great stats, with one topping the other in various fields. Yes, further tests will cement Apple's claims and allow us to understand what the phone is truly capable of, but as of now, it still strikes a better deal than the Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. What's the final verdict? Apple loyalists should rejoice as the iPhone has finally regained its holding, while the competitors need to buck up and deliver an overall smashing product to rival iPhone's re-established glory.
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