Though the iPhone 5s won't be available in stores until September 20, we were able to use some demo models for a little while on Tuesday after Apple's media event announcing them. We scanned our thumbs, took pictures, and tried to imagine what part of space is gray. Here's our hands-on first look.
Look and feel
The iPhone 5s feels an awful lot like the iPhone 5. It isn't noticeably heavier in hand, nor is the look particularly different—save for its new color options.
When the iPhone 5s was only a rumor, much was made about one of those new color options: the gold version. But this isn't some crazy, Vegas-style iPhone: It's a muted metallic color that's the gold equivalent of the iPhone 5's silver. The gold iPhone 5s has a white front and gold metallic sides and back. The new "space gray" iPhone is basically the old black iPhone, with the slate metal shade brought up into a dark gray. (Space, by the way, is completely black—not gray.)
In using the iPhone 5s briefly, we found it speedy and snappy, and iOS 7 looks great. We weren't able to run any benchmark tests or particularly hungry apps, so there was no way to put to the test Apple's claims of it being twice as fast as the iPhone 5 in many tasks. As we said, the iPhone 5s feels more or less like the iPhone 5. It's truly an iPhone with an "s" at the end at its name—a whole bunch of upgraded internals built on top of a phone design that seems quite familiar.
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