WHAT IS THE IPHONE 5C?
The iPhone 5C is a cheaper alternative to the iPhone 5S and marks the first time that Apple has changed its mobile line-up. Traditionally, if you were looking for a cheaper iPhone you would have to step back in the series to an older handset, this time it has released two phones at once.
The iPhone is a notoriously expensive phone regardless of which version you buy, and the iPhone 5C has not broken the mould in this sense. At launch it commanded a price tag of £469, but its price has since been slashed to under £300/ $450. You can currently get your hands on the 8GB version from Best Buy for as little as $300. It actually costs roughly the same as the iPhone 5, a phone it shares a lot of its internals with.
The iPhone 5C has ditched the metal body that has been used in the iPhone 5S and Apple’s latest flagships, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and instead opted for a bright, plastic body. Does it bring more than just this superficial change to the table, though?
IPHONE 5C – DESIGN
The iPhone 5C is a unibody phone, which means you have no access to the battery or the insides unless you’re willing to fully take it apart.
At a glance, you could be forgiven for mistaking the iPhone 5C for a member of the Nokia Lumia family. It takes design inspiration from Nokia’s range, which finally proved that a plastic phone doesn’t have to feel cheap.
The iPhone 5C is a touch wider and 30g heavier than the iPhone 5S so feels a little weightier in the hand. This isn’t really an area of complaint though. At 9mm thick and just 132g it is still a very lean phone.
You have a choice of five colours for the iPhone 5C – pink, blue, yellow, green and white. They’re much more fun to look at than the slightly austere iPhone 5S, but the colours are not dazzlingly bright, they’re more pastel-looking. They’re a little more muted than the Nokia Lumia phones.
The iPhone 5C feels as immaculately well-made, which you would expect from Apple – there are no gaps or inconsistencies in the border between the plastic back and glass front, no flexing of the body. But glossy plastic was never going to feel as impressive as the aluminium rear of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S.
We also found that the plastic nano SIM slot on the phone’s right edge tends to get a little mucky, spoiling the otherwise impressive consistency of the phone’s colouring – the buttons and mute switch are all colour-matched to the rear.
The iPhone 5C has a strong look, but we’re not as impressed by the official Apple iPhone 5C case. It’s a felt-lined rubbery case with cut-out dots on the rear. Match the colours well and you’ll get a funky look, but the way the dots reveal part of the iPhone logo looks clumsy and the rubbery finish attracts dust and fluff to the plastic body within minutes. The concept is decent, but the execution falls short of the standard set by the phone itself.
The placement of the iPhone 5C’s buttons and switches are more-or-less identical to those of the iPhone 5. A mute switch sits on the left edge, alongside the volume buttons, while a power button lives up top. It’s a design that simply works on a phone this size, with every button easily accessible without having to use two hands. This is one of the main benefits of a smaller phone like this – it’s a much less intimidating presence than any high-end Android phone.
If you’re upgrading from a pre-iPhone 5 Apple phone, though, there are some new-ish things to get used to. The iPhone 5C uses a tiny nano SIM, and the Lightning port introduced by the iPhone 5. The port may be a consideration if you have a swanky high-end speaker dock that won’t fit an iPhone 5C – although Apple does offer an adapter for the rather princely sum of £25.
SEE ALSO: iPhone 6 Plus Review
Unfortunately the iPhone 5C misses out on what’s probably the biggest hardware innovation of the iPhone 5S – the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. This lets you secure your phone against the fingers of any more mischievous friends without using a passcode. It’s a genuinely useful feature, but here you’ll either have to use the passcode or go without that extra layer of protection.
IPHONE 5C – SCREEN
Just like the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C has a 4-inch screen. It’s smaller than every Android phone at the price, but quality-wise it’s excellent.
Side-by-side we couldn’t tell any big differences between this display and the iPhone 5S’s. They use exactly the same type of panel. It’s a top-quality IPS panel that offers superb colour reproduction, excellent contrast and startling peak brightness.
The iPhone 5C uses a 1,136 x 640 pixel screen. The resulting 326ppi pixel density is the same pixel pitch that saw the introduction of the term ‘Retina’ display – meaning so sharp you can’t see the pixels.
Other phones have since far outstripped this pixel density. The HTC One M8 has a 441ppi screen. However, if anyone tells you it’s a reason to buy that phone over the iPhone 5C, they’re wrong. At normal viewing distances there’s little benefit in higher pixel density IPS screens than this. You can only tell much of a difference if you get your eyeballs right up close to the screen – not a good look on the train, and no good for your eyes.
Of course, screen size is an absolutely valid consideration. What the iPhone 5C gains in practicality – it’s so easy to grasp and use one-handed – it loses in other areas. A large screen like the LG G3’s or Samsung Galaxy S5’s offers a better canvas for websites (especially non-mobile ones) and is far, far better as a display for watching videos.
The same could be said for games but, as we’ll cover later, this is made up for by the iPhone’s unbeatable game library.
IPHONE 5C – IOS 7
The iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S are the first two new phones to ship with iOS 7, the biggest update to the iPhone operating system in its history. It’s a clear attempt to address criticisms that iOS has fallen behind rival systems like Android and Windows Phone in some respects.
iOS 7 is a largely successful update. It is a significant stylistic re-working of the iPhone software that doesn’t ruin the simplicity of the system, which is perhaps the key to its staggering mainstream success (something that’s hard to fully appreciate six years in.)
If you’re used an iPhone before, you’ll initially be struck by quite how differently it moves, compared to previous versions. The iPhone 5C’s software is all swooshy transitions, and the sense of inertia and the physics of movement play a far greater part than before.
It’s something we largely attribute to the largely positive reception of Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8, which took this approach to the feel of a mobile phone operating system more seriously than ever before. And Apple’s nicked it, basically.
There are new bits clearly indebted to Android, too.
The iPhone 5C’s iOS 7 has something called Control Center that mimics some of the functions found in many Android phones. It lets you control brightness, switch functions like Wi-Fi on and off, and control music playback. You access Control Center by swiping upwards from the bottom of the screen.
It’s neat, but we still think that the updated look and feel of the iOS 7 is its biggest feature. Jonathan Ive is the man who was in charge of iOS 7.
And as the bloke who also had a significant hand in the design of almost every iconic Apple product of the last 20 years, it’s no surprise that he’s a bit obsessed with questions of aesthetics.
Don’t think you like the iOS 7 look? We’ve heard many people complain about the new software, but it’s fundamentally something that’ll sink in very quickly. And if you skip back to iOS 6 after using the new software for a week, the older version does feel very dated indeed.
iOS 7 – a successful update even if many of its best bits are borrowed. For more on th iPhone 5C software, read our iOS 7 tips and tricks guide.
IPHONE 5C – APPS AND PERFORMANCE
Take a step back, though, and you can only conclude that the iPhone ecosystem’s fortes are what they have been for years – apps and games.
There are more than a 900,000 apps live in iTunes’s App Store. And while that’s believed to be slightly less than found on Android’s Google Play, the selection of apps and games on iTunes is much better.
While there are (at the time of writing at least) some minor compatibility issues with some apps thanks to iOS 7, the iPhone 5C will be able to use just about all of them. It’s because – whisper it – this phone is almost identical to the iPhone 5.
Both phones have a dual-core 1.3GHz Apple A6 processor. Both phones have 1GB of RAM. Both phone use the triple-core PowerVR SGX 543MP3 GPU.
Spec-heads may find this disappointing, but it’s good news really. Developers have been optimising games for this setup for a year now, and it’s capable of cranking out some great visuals.
However, it does mean that there’s very little reason to upgrade from an iPhone 5 to an iPhone 5C. Their level-pegging specs mean they’ll be supported by both Apple and the app scene’s developers for exactly the same length of time.
But is the iPhone 5S’s extra grunt worth investing in? The iPhone 5S costs £80 more than the 5C, and as well as the Touch ID sensor, improved camera and metal body, that gets you a new Apple A7 processor.
It’s the first 64-bit mobile phone processor, and has an improved PowerVR series 6 GPU. The Geekbench 3 benchmark shows that – while dual-core – it’s an alarmingly fast chip that flattens both the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4.
But what does it mean in real terms? It’ll get you slightly better-looking graphics in a fistful of games and the assurance that your phone will be supported by Apple (i.e. software updates) for longer.
The question of better looking games is arguably becoming less of an issue than it used to be, as many of the biggest developers are starting to focus on free-to-play titles that rarely feature cutting-edge graphics. Few developers produce top-end 3D mobile games, as it’s an expensive endeavour that’s arguably at odds with the mobile gaming market.
However, the other issue - of long-term support - is a biggie. If 64-bit architecture is the future of iOS, the 32-bit iPhone 5C could start to miss out on new software features. We strongly doubt this will happen in the next 12 months, but if you want a phone to hold onto for 2-3 years the iPhone 5S is a better bet.
IPHONE 5C – CAMERA APP
The iPhone 5C has a newly-designed camera app. After originally thinking that iOS 7 would dramatically open up the iPhone camera to make it feel more like the feature-packed Samsung Galaxy S4, we’re (mostly) glad to see it’s largely familiar.
A new coat of interface paint doesn’t hide that you’re still given three main controls over the iPhone 5C’s camera – you can turn HDR mode and the flash on and off, and there’s a panorama mode. The other options – the new bits – are really software manipulations and simple photo modes.
But what are they? Flicks left and right across the iPhone 5C’s screen alter the size and shape of a photo. As well as the ‘normal’ rectangular shape you can take a square shot that’s perfect for social network profile pics. Also in-keeping with the mores of the Instagram generation, there are software filters.
Nine different filters let you add a vignette effect, increase warmth and generally fiddle with the character of your photos. There’s nothing as dramatic as the creative burst modes and real-time video effects that you’ll find on some Android phones, though.
The positive effect of the iPhone 5C’s relatively conservative approach to its camera app is that no mode actually reduces photo quality (aside from that the ‘cropping’ of a square shot doesn’t use the whole sensor’s output.)
The Panorama mode is worth a mention too. It’s excellent, just as it was in the iPhone 5. This is one of the few full-resolution panorama modes – the images it captures are gigantic, and look great.
iOS 7 takes a much more dynamic approach to the sharing of photos, too. In the Photos app you’ll find Photo Streams, which is a way so share video and photos with friends through the magic of iCloud. Looks and feel-wise, it’s a great service. But it has its limits.
It will only let you see the photos of – and share with – your Apple-fan mates. Android owners are expressly forbidden. And unless you fork out more cash, you’re limited to 5GB of iCloud storage. 10GB costs £14 a year, 20GB is £28 a year and 50GB £70 a year.
That might be easy for Apple fanatics to justify given how seamless iCloud can seem. But when you can get up to 18GB free from Dropbox (admittedly by referring friends to the service), it can seem a bit steep.
There is some solace here, however, as you can also share albums (aka Moments) to Facebook and Flickr straight from the Photos app, while you can share individual photos on Twitter. These options mostly make up for the limited iCloud storage and sharing, though anything you share on these services won't appear in the 'Shared' section of the Photos app.
IPHONE 5C – CAMERA IMAGE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE
The iPhone 5C’s rear camera hardware is functionally identical to that of the iPhone 5. It has an 8-megapixel Sony sensor that’s 1/3.2-inch in size, resulting in 1.4-micron sensor pixels.
It’s entirely free of the headline-grabbing features seen in recent high-end phone cameras. There’s no optical image stabilisation, no oversized sensor and no super-fast lens – like the iPhone 5 it’s an f/2.4 lens.
However, it remains an excellent camera for the average person. It’s quick – both in terms of the speed of focusing and the delay between shots. We recently looked at the Lumia 1020, a camera that can produce far better images, but takes longer to do so. Snaps missed because of camera processing lag are rare with an iPhone.
Let’s take a closer look at what it’s capable of, image quality-wise.
Detail and Exposure
Fate decided to offer us a particularly miserable day on which to take photos, but a grey cloudy scene is a pretty good test for a camera. It offers plenty of opportunity for it to overexpose clouds, or underexpose other elements.
However, the iPhone 5C fared well. Its exposure is even and well-judged, showing some detail in the cloud cover without making the foreground buildings appear more depressing than a weekend at a motorway service station.
Getting right down to pixel level, the iPhone 5C camera – predictably – captured a similar level of detail to the iPhone 5. Apple does seem to have reduced its image sharpening a tiny bit with iOS 7. Compared to an iPhone 5 running iOS 7, our test image looks a tiny bit softer and a tiny bit less noisy – with slightly lower contrast.
This sounds like a negative change, and that’s how it appears at pixel level. However, zoom out and the iPhone 5C’s shot looks a little more natural. The two are fundamentally very similar, though.
Low-light and Flash
With a small 1/3.2-inch sensor, the low-light capabilities of the iPhone 5C are naturally going to be quite limited.
Without using the flash, low-light shots are extremely noisy. However, as ever Apple makes the right moves when it comes to processing images to make them most usable.
The shot below – which was very gloomy in person – shows that the exposure compensation has been boosted to make use of what little light there is. However, the level of noise is still worse than you’d see in an HTC One or top-end Lumia phone like the Lumia 925 or Lumia 1020.
The iPhone 5C features a fairly unremarkable LED flash - it misses out on the clever dual-tone LED flash of the iPhone 5S, and the 'vignette' like effect shows the limits to an LED's range and even-ness.
The LED flash isn't a wonder, but we're glad it's there
Macro and Focusing
The iPhone 5C does not have a specific macro mode. You simply have to tap on your subject to focus and hope you’re not asking too much of the lens.
You can’t get extremely close and still have your subject in-focus, and since the iPhone 5 was launched in 2012, the 8-megapixel camera rig has been outclassed several times technically, but it’s not bad at all. Image sharpness is very good.
Depth of Field
Other than low-light performance, another key area that other higher-end cameras can beat the iPhone 5C is depth of field effects.
The camera can’t handle truly shallow focusing, and background areas are only somewhat blurred. With some effort you can produce shots with a somewhat shallow field, but having been spoilt with the Lumia 1020, it’s clear that the iPhone 5C isn’t close to performing at that camera’s level in this respect. The HTC One outclasses it too.
As with most mobile cameras, only relatively minor depth of field effects are possible
HDR
Like the iPhone 5, the iPhone 5C has a very good HDR mode, which merges two different exposures to reduce overexposure and increase the amount of shadow detail in your photos. As the demo below shows, it manages to reduce the slightly glum look to photos on grey days.
The HDR mode is strong as ever
It’s not so intense that it makes photos look entirely artificial either – a too-intense application of HDR can result in weird halo’ing around objects (which can look good in the right hands, but generally looks a bit naff.)
Video Capture
The iPhone 5C is – like the iPhone 5 – a decent video capture device. It can take 1080p videos and uses software stabilisation to avoid handheld footage looking like migraine-inducing jerk-o-vision.
iOS 7 also introduces a neat dual-capture feature. When recording video a shutter button appears, letting you take photos on the fly. Where other phones prioritise more gimmicky features like capturing front and rear camera footage at the same time, this less flashy addition seems much more useful to us.
Front Camera
The one hardware element of the iPhone 5C that does significantly improve upon the iPhone 5 is the front camera. It has a 1.2-megapixel camera – just like the last iPhone – but the sensor is slightly larger.
We wouldn’t extend to using it for portraits to print out, but it is an above-average video chat camera. It is particularly effective at dealing with bright light sources. Where a lesser front camera tend to show a smeared halo around lights, the iPhone 5C keeps things looking as they should – crisp and clean.
IPHONE 5C – BATTERY LIFE
One of the lowest-key updates in the iPhone 5C is its battery. Its 1,507mAh unit is slightly larger than the iPhone 5’s 1,440mAh battery – and the slight disparity between this and the 1,570 mAh battery could be explained by the extra tech the more expensive phone packs-in.
A larger battery does not revolutionise the iPhone’s stamina, but we were happy with the results. It’s able to survive a full day of heavy use, including around an hour of streaming video over 4G, lengthy stretches of web browsing and all notifications unrestricted.
However, you certainly won’t get two full days’ use out of the iPhone 5C unless you put in some serious battery-saving tactics. We also noticed some fairly inconsistent periods of battery drain, which we'll put down to bugs and currently under-optimised parts of iOS that will likely be fixed in future updates.
IPHONE 5C – CALL QUALITY AND CONNECTIVITY
The most basic elements of a phone are these days the least talked-about. Call quality these days is limited mostly by the ropey quality of traditional phone calls, but the iPhone 5C makes the most of it. The earpiece speaker is loud and clear, and we experienced no dropped calls during our testing.
Apple fixed the connectivity issues that a metal-bodied phone can cause, but the new plastic iPhone 5C shouldn't really be susceptible to them at all. The phone is also fairly future-proofed in terms of its mobile internet skills. It's a 4G-capable phone that covers 13 different 4G bands - enough to ensure compatibility with all the 4G networks coming to the UK.
There's one serious omission we had hoped to see: NFC. After a series of rumours suggesting the iPhone series would adopt NFC, it has once again been left out.
In its place, Apple has introduced AirDrop. This doesn't offer any of the wireless payments potential of NFC, but it does let you easily transfer information between new Apple devices using a custom implentation of Wi-Fi Direct. AirDrop only came to iPhones with iOS 7, but has been around in MacBooks for a little while.
IPHONE 5C – INTERNAL SPEAKER AND MUSIC
iOS 7 also sees Apple give its music player a spruce-up. However, it’s really just a stylistic re-working that ultimately doesn’t change how the app works - it's just a touch version of the classic iPod nav interface.
The internal speaker appears to be a similar, if not the same, model used in the iPhone 5. Five little holes on the bottom of the iPhone 5C act as the speaker grille.
It’s not a fantastic speaker, and tends to sound harsh and strained at top volume – albeit a mite less so than the iPhone 5, potentially because of its different internal structure and use of a plastic outer instead of aluminium. However, top volume is decent and at lower volumes detail is reasonable for a micro-speaker.
SHOULD I BUY THE IPHONE 5C?
The iPhone 5C is an interesting phone, but mostly because of the way it alters Apple’s product strategy rather than because of anything the phone itself does.
Aside from an improved front camera and the new plastic design, the iPhone 5C is similar to the iPhone 5. Very similar.
That’s no bad thing when considered from the perspective of what the phone is actually like to use. However, it does make the £470 price a bitter pill.
It’s a price that means the iPhone 5C has to compete directly with Android behemoths the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 on the SIM-free stage, though. Both phones are available for well under £500 these days.
Of course, these are not direct comparisons. Should you buy the iPhone 5S instead of this? Despite looking a lot more serious and stuffy, the iPhone 5S is the far more interesting phone tech-wise and has a marginally – but noticeably – better camera.
It's a good upgrade for any iPhone 4 owner who doesn't care about the extra 5S features, but if you're 4S owner who decided not to get an iPhone 5 it doesn't make much sense to get a 5C.
If the difference in cost is minor, we recommend stretching for the top model.
VERDICT
The iPhone 5C is a replacement for the iPhone 5, designed to be cheaper to produce than that older model. There are some small improvements, such as the new front-facing camera, but it’s not a worthwhile upgrade from that phone unless you fall in love with the new colourful bodies. It’s not particularly interesting tech-wise, but the tech underneath this phone’s shell hasn’t aged enough in the last year to make this anything but a very good phone.
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