The iPhone 5S is the best iPhone ever made. But of course it is. We have come to expect nothing less from Apple. But have we come to expect more?
As reviews for the iPhone 5S flood in and reviewers cast their verdict on Apple’s latest and greatest, we take a look at the expert reviews from around the web to paint a picture as to just how good the new 5S actually is.
iPhone 5S Reviews
The Verge – 8.8 / 10.
The Verge love the iPhone 5S’s design, display, camera, reception and call quality, performance and app ecosystem, with the biggest bug bears being software and battery life – iOS 7 is slick to use, but it’s not perfect and the reviewer expected better battery life from the 5S than on the iPhone 5 whereas it’s actually around the same.
Anandtech – An evolutionary improvement.
Just like The Verge, Anandtech found the performance of the iPhone 5S and brand new A7 SoC to be amazing and the build quality of the handset to be fantastic. The fingerprint sensor was found to be well executed and intuitive.
Business Insider – Close to perfect.
Business Insider has, over the last 2 years, become very black and white – they either LOVE products or HATE products. Anything Apple falls in to the former. So, little surprise here that the headline on the Business Insider iPhone 5S review reads ‘as close to perfect as you’re going to get’. In the defense of BI, they apply that perfection to 4-inch smartphones only.
Wired – 8 / 10.
Wired are a great source of unbiased reviews. They found the iPhone 5S to be a worthy update to the 5 and loved the handsets improved performance and praised Touch ID, claiming it feels like the future and works flawlessly. They also enjoyed the camera, but noted that Siri could still be better.
Pocket-Lint – 5 / 5.
Pocket-Lint have, perhaps, the best reviews of any technology blog. They awarded the iPhone 5S with a full 5 / 5 star rating based on the handsets improved performance, camera, universal 4G support and Touch ID. They say that the screen still feels small compared to the competition and iCloud is still a mess, but overall, the handset is well recommended.
Bloomberg – Failure to excite.
Bloomberg wasn’t impressed with the new iPhone 5S or iPhone 5C. They noted the range of purely incremental changes to hardware and that while the iPhone maker has never issued more than one device at any given time, “[Apple] also never changed so little from the previous generation,” hinting at a lack of innovation on the company’s part.
