Apple iPhone 5s (Verizon Wireless)

The iPhone 5s ($199 for 16GB with contract) is a tiny phone with a lot of room to grow. It's amazing how a 4-inch, 4-ounce smartphone is now considered small, but that's the world we live in. Underneath the diminutive hood, though, lies fearsome power. It's what's below the surface, not what's on the outside, that? makes the iPhone 5s our Editors' Choice.?

The secret is that, more than any iPhone since the iPhone 3G (when Apple's App Store was introduced), it's a platform rather than a product. Three of this phone's key advances, the A7 processor, M7 motion coprocessor, and the Touch ID fingerprint sensor, are being used less now than I suspect they will in the future. That makes the 5s the best bet for anyone who wants a future-proof, forward-looking phone that runs an unbeatable array of apps.

Physical Features and Wireless and Call Quality
At first glance, it's tough to tell the 5s and the iPhone 5 apart. At 4.87 by 2.31 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and 3.95 ounces, it's the same size and weight. The materials are very similar, too: glass front, aluminum edge, metal-and-glass back. All the buttons are in the same place, so you can use iPhone 5 cases with the 5s, as long as the Home button is uncovered, and the camera cutout is large enough to accommodate the new dual LED flash. It looks like the glass will be just as breakable here, so you'll probably want to cover the phone up. Here are our favorite iPhone 5s cases.

The 4-inch, 1,136-by-640, 326-pixel-per-inch Retina display is now one of the more disappointing aspects of the iPhone experience. It's needle sharp, but the 5s panel is exactly the same as last year's model, when most competitors are ranging between 4.5 and 5 inches. I'm no fan of huge handsets, but as more people use their smartphones as their primary portals to the Internet, there's room to make that window a bit bigger while still keeping it single-hand friendly. The Moto X masters this feat.

The other physical changes from 5 to the 5s are pretty subtle. The little square in the middle of the Home button is gone, because the button is now the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. I found that using the sensor created a little bit of a smudge in the middle of the button, which is the first time I've seen a fingerprint smudge fit with a phone's design. On the back of the phone, the little round flash is now a longer oval.

This creates a dilemma for 5s owners, and it's part of why the gold color is in such high demand: People who paid for a new phone want it to look like they have a new phone. Our test phone was Space Gray, which is a bit different from the black iPhone 5, but it might not be enough to satisfy those looking for an easily discernible difference. They're going to have to wait for the gold model, which is harder to get, but is attractively low-key and not as gaudy as you might imagine.

We tested the iPhone 5s side by side with the iPhone 5c, Verizon iPhone 5, and the Samsung Galaxy S4, our other Editors' Choice, in midtown Manhattan. In a series of speed tests, the iPhone 5s generally got the same disappointing LTE results of 1-3Mbps down and about 1Mbps up that the iPhone 5 scored; Verizon's network has been super-saturated lately, and we're even getting sub-1Mbps download results, which are EVDO Rev 0-class.

In our office building's basement, we made test calls and ran data speed tests with the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, the LG G2, and the Samsung Galaxy S4. All the phones showed one circle or bar of 2G coverage. The Galaxy S4 had the least trouble connecting calls, followed by the two newer iPhones, then the iPhone 5, and lastly the LG G2.

Sound quality is good, not great, as is typical with iPhones. The earpiece is loud enough, and there was a bit of sidetone, but conversations were marked by harsh sibilance, and there's no way to tune the audio like you can on the Galaxy S4. Transmissions, on the other hand, sounded great on the other end of the calls thanks to excellent noise cancellation, and the relatively powerful bottom-ported speakerphone. The iPhone 5s, like previous iPhones, had no problem connecting to a Bluetooth headset and activating the Siri voice assistant.

It became obvious that call quality was limited by the network when we compared a standard Verizon voice call to Apple's FaceTime Audio, which uses the data network. On Verizon's voice network, people sounded clipped and sometimes computerized. On a FaceTime Audio call over our Wi-Fi network, voices became much richer; we heard the person on the other end breathing and typing on a keyboard as he was talking.

On the other hand, FaceTime Audio requires a data connection with decent quality of service, which the carriers don't currently guarantee. In a park in midtown Manhattan with three circles of LTE signal, we were able to connect voice calls, but couldn't get FaceTime Audio to work because the data connection was too slow, and too saturated.

The 5s comes in five models, of which two are on sale in the U.S. Verizon and Sprint use the same model (which supports CDMA) and AT&T and T-Mobile use the same model (which doesn't). The phone supports all of Verizon's, AT&T's, and T-Mobile's frequency bands for 3G and LTE service, but only one of Sprint's three LTE bands, the 1900MHz band. That's going to create problems for the Sprint iPhone, as the company is trying to use a combination of 800MHz, 1900MHz, and 2600MHz LTE to balance speed and coverage. So far, the LG G2 is the only Sprint phone able to take full advantage of the carrier's LTE bands.

By default Verizon's iPhone will roam globally on the fastest 3G networks it can find. Verizon unlocks the SIM card slots after 60 days if your account is in good standing, so you can pop in a foreign nano-SIM.

You get Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, and dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, just like on the iPhone 5; the two wireless buzzwords missing are 802.11ac and NFC, neither of which are widely implemented in the U.S. yet. And just like other Verizon iPhones, this model can't do simultaneous voice and data; while our other Editors' Choice, the Galaxy S4, can. The 5s uses Apple's new Lightning connector, so if you're moving up from an iPhone 4 or 4S, you'll need to upgrade your accessories as well. Apple includes its surprisingly good-sounding EarPod earbuds in the box.

We're currently testing battery life, but so far, it looks to be similar to the iPhone 5's talk time at just about 10 hours. That's shorter than leading Android-powered smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S4, but the iPhone 5 has a smaller screen, which demands less power than 5-inch displays do.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Uhh_liHqjCI/0,2817,2424245,00.asp

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