The new iOS 7 camera app features a much cleaner and simpler layout. First, the viewfinder finally shows a preview of the entire area (not just a crop with the wrong aspect ratio), so composing shots is a lot easier. Second, there are no more overlays cluttering the viewfinder. When looking at the screen in landscape, the app groups the controls on either side of the viewfinder, with the front / rear camera switch, HDR toggle and flash menu to the left, and the mode selector (pano, square, photo and video), filter button, shutter key and gallery shortcut to the right. The touch-to-focus, pinch-to-zoom and the AE / AF lock functionality remain unchanged, but holding down the shutter key now shoots multiple photos in a row. It's like a basic version of the burst mode on the iPhone 5s.

So how does the iPhone 5c shooter fare? It produces lovely pictures with lots of detail, vibrant colors, accurate exposure and proper white balance. Panoramas are particularly impressive. Best of all, it does this consistently -- anyone can take great photos with the 5c, something we can't say about every other device. Of course, camera modules have come a long way since the iPhone 5 was launched. As such, low-light performance is only decent up to a point, beyond which pictures suffer from excessive noise. The 5c records video in HD at 1080p / 30 fps with mono audio. Video quality is excellent (files are encoded at 16 Mbps), but there's no continuous autofocus, so you'll have to tap the display to refocus. On the bright side, though, the front-facing camera works better in low light, which means nicer selfies for all. (Update: here's a ZIP file with our full-res sample shots from the iPhone 5c.)

Performance and battery life

As we mentioned above, the iPhone 5c shares its internals with the iPhone 5, so it comes as no surprise that Apple's colorful new handset feels just as fast as its predecessor. In short, everything's smooth and responsive. The benchmarks confirm this -- we tested the 5c alongside the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5 all running iOS 7, plus a second iPhone 5 with iOS 6. As you can see in the table below, the results for the 5c and iPhone 5 are nearly identical. There's a slight bump in speed from iOS 7 in some cases and, of course, the iPhone 5s is in a different league, often showing twice the performance of the 5c. Other than playing resource-intensive games like the upcoming Infinity Blade III, we think most people will be completely satisfied with the 5c.

iPhone 5s iPhone 5c iPhone 5 SunSpider 1.0.1 (ms) 418 754 797 GLBench 2.7 T-Rex HD Offscreen (fps) 23 6.5 6.5 Basemark X (onscreen / offscreen) 27.7 / 16.7 18 / 7.5 17.7 / 7.1 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited 13,729 N/A 5,442 Geekbench 3.0 (multi-thread) 2,562 1,218 1,301 Linpack 795 479 501 SunSpider: lower scores are better. Linpack scores taken on average. iPhones tested on iOS 7.0.

It's the same story with battery life. The iPhone 5c lasts about as long on a full charge as the iPhone 5. According to Brian Klug at Anandtech, the 5c incorporates a 1,507mAh battery -- a modest boost over the 1,440mAh cell in the iPhone 5. Getting a full day of heavy use from the 5c is relatively trivial, and we even managed to squeeze two days of light use out of it -- think intense day working on the go versus a quiet day lounging at home. We spent almost four solid hours using the handset (most of it with the screen turned on at maximum brightness) while shooting our video review and the battery still registered 40 percent capacity at the end. In our standard battery rundown test -- looping a video from a full charge with the brightness and volume set to half, WiFi enabled (but not connected) and Bluetooth turned off -- the 5c ran for 10 hours and 39 minutes vs. 10 hours and 50 minutes for the iPhone 5s and nine hours and 17 minutes for the iPhone 5.

We didn't experience any issues with reception or call quality -- the iPhone 5c sounds loud and clear even in noisy environments. Compared to the iPhone 5, the 5c features a speaker that's slightly boomier and a bit louder at maximum volume. We listened to a variety of music on the 5c through Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro headphones and Etymotic Research hf3 earphones. Audio quality is top-notch -- it's something Apple's always done right, and other manufacturers are only now paying attention to (the HTC One and LG G2 come to mind). Data speeds hovered around 10 Mbps down and 6 Mbps up on Verizon's LTE network in and around San Francisco -- 6 Mbps down and 3.5 Mbps on AT&T inside our office with a 75 percent LTE signal.

Software

There was a lot of brouhaha in tech circles after Apple previewed iOS 7 at WWDC -- moans and groans about the colors, iconography and typography. While we weren't averse to the new design, per se, we wanted to reserve judgment until launch. Well, after using iOS 7 for a few days, it's hard to imagine going back to iOS 6.

In iOS 7, which comes pre-loaded on the 5c and the 5s, skeuomorphism is out (finally!) and flat is in, but unlike Windows Phone and other flat UIs, iOS 7 restores some depth with layers, translucency and even parallax. It looks amazing, especially on the colorful iPhone 5c, and shows what's possible when hardware and software are designed as one.

iOS 7 will immediately feel familiar and comfortable to anyone who's used iOS before. That's because the mechanics are by and large identical. Most controls and other UI elements are in the same place and behave just like before. It's the cosmetics that have been reworked, with new fonts (Helvetica Neue, mostly), icons, colors (bright pastels), graphics and even gestures. Apple's core apps also benefit from these changes and are better for it. There's a lot to write about and indeed, we'll have a full iOS 7 review to share with you in the coming days. In the meantime, let's take a look at some of the new features.

First, the keyboard's been updated with a new look and Spotlight's easier to access by simply tugging down on any home screen panel. Folders now support multiple panels and hold even more apps. Siri's no longer in beta and includes an additional (male) voice. In case you couldn't tell, we're pretty enchanted with the parallax effect in the new dynamic wallpapers -- it's clever.