Apple calls it their “most forward-thinking iPhone yet” and with the slew of features packed in the new iPhone 5s, they are trying to back up those words. The Cupertino-based company boasts that the A7 ARM chip inside the iPhone 5s makes it the world’s first smartphone with a 64-bit desktop-class architecture that is said to be 40x faster than the original iPhone and bringing with it graphics power that is 56x faster as well. It also runs on an updated iOS 7 to support 64-bit processing and has a new Apple chip called M7, which is a “motion co-processor” dedicated to monitoring the phone’s motion and position data. Another new feature in the iPhone 5s is the Touch ID fingerprint sensor that lets you easily unlock the device in any orientation and verify purchases from the iTunes Store, App Store, and iBooks Store with the touch of a finger on the home button.
This new iPhone also packs in a new 8-megapixel iSight camera with a larger f/2.2 aperture, 10 frames-per-second burst mode, and “true tone” flash for more realistic lighting. It also has 13 LTE wireless band support. However, no NFC support has been mentioned by the company. The iPhone 5s is going to be sold in three colours—gold, silver, and “space grey”—with suggested retail prices of US$199 (16GB), $299 (32GB), and $399 (64GB). It will be available here in Canada at the same time as the iPhone 5c on September 20.