Apple launches 5S and 5C iPhones

Apple yesterday launched two iPhones - the new flagship 5S and the lower-cost colourful 5C.

The devices will be available for retail sales on 20 September.

According to a USA yesterday report, the iPhones come with a number of new features that users would no doubt appreciate.

For starters there is the Touch ID, that includes a fingerprint sensor to unlock the 5S. According to Apple, fingerprints are encrypted and stored directly on the iPhone's A7 chip.

The new devices feature:
Camera: The 5S camera, comes with the same number of megapixels as the iPhone 5, but the 5S comes with interesting upgrades, complete with faster auto-focus and photo capture, burst mode and slow-motion video.

Colours: Apple's latest handsets offer a range of options with gold, silver and space gray colour schemes in the 5s, while the 5C offers five different colour options: pink, white, blue, green and yellow.

5C price: Apple's lower-cost smartphone option is available at $99 for 16GB, while the 32GB version users would cost $199. According to commentators, it was an interesting option for those seeking a more affordable option (all prices require two-year wireless contract).

Free iWork: Apple's suite of productivity applications, including Pages, Keynotes and Numbers, would be available for free to anyone who bought a new iOS device.

Meanwhile, in China users seem to have given a thumbs down to the new devices from the fact that  there was not a single compliment for the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s among thousands of posts on Chinese news agency sites, according to a report on ZDNet.

Chinese netizens largely find the iPhone 5s rather boring, apart from the fingerprint unlock function the comes as a bright spot

In a Sina Tech survey, that polled over 100,000 votes in less than two hours while, Lee says, 35 per cent of respondents said they would choose the iPhone 5s, as against 3 per cent who preferred iPhone 5C.

The rest said they would give both models a miss. As regards the prices for the iPhone 5c models, according to 87 per cent of respondents the colored iPhone 5 range was rather steeply priced for  China.

The official prices of iPhone 5s were identical to the iPhone 5 sold earlier in China, where the low-end 16GB model was priced at 5,288 yuan ($864) per set. However, the long-waited cheaper version, iPhone 5c, priced at 4,488 yuan ($733) for the 16GB model, came as the only "big surprise" to Chinese consumers this time, though, not in a happy way unfortunately.