8 / 10

When Apple finally confirmed that it would be releasing a cheaper plastic iPhone, almost no one was surprised -- rumours and leaks have been rife for many months. What was more of a surprise was that the cheap, plastic iPhone wasn't quite so cheap and plasticky after all. Plus, it rocked identical components to the iPhone 5.

Starting at £469, the 5c is no mid-range or budget smartphone, but a premium piece of kit repackaged in a colourful plastic casing. Apple is clearly positioning it to appeal to a certain type of customer that its iPhones have not until now been successful in reaching, but are you that customer? Or should you bite the bullet and invest in the top-of-the-range iPhone 5s? Read on to help you decide.

Design


With iOS 7 available on every iPhone since the 4 and no specs to boast of that outshine the 5s's, the most defining and remarkable aspect of this phone is its design. The iPhone 5c is after all basically an iPhone 5, but when you look at it and hold it in your hand it's very hard to think of it this way.

The 5c is ever so slightly chunkier than its predeccessor, measuring 124x59x9mm to the iPhone 5's 124x59x7.6mm, and it also weighs an extra 20g. Clad in a white or brightly hued polycarbonate shell, the 5c looks from the very front much like an iPhone 5 in a case, with a slim rim clinging to the outer reaches of the bezel.

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Turn it over or examine the sides and it's a different story -- the phone is a halfway house between the iPhones 5 and 3GS, offering the basic chassis shape of the former, along with unbroken casing that has previously been seen on the latter.

Don't for a moment be concerned that the plastic coating makes the 5c in any way resemble some of the flimsier -- and yet still remarkably expensive -- Android handsets out there. Even though the phone doesn't have quite the premium panache of its Apple siblings, it's still very sturdy and reassuringly weighty. Its playful look does not make it seem like a toy.


Gallery: Apple iPhone 5c review Gallery Gallery: Apple iPhone 5c review + 12

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What the design of the 5C says to me -- an iPhone 4 owner -- is not that this is my next iPhone, but that this is an iPhone for someone who perhaps thought until now that they didn't need an iPhone. Maybe they are or have been an iPod owner -- after all the 5C is packaged very much like an iPod touch -- but thought they had no real justification for getting the cutting-edge, top-of-the-range phone.

If you have owned an iPhone 4, 4s or 5, you might feel shortchanged by the design of the 5c, which while still very attractive, is not quite the svelte aluminum and glass work of art you may have become accustomed to. The 5s on the other hand is built in the model of its forebears.

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The smartphone market since Apple first nailed phone design with the iPhone 4 has shifted dramatically though, and the company is no longer hoping to just appeal to those who lust after the aesthetics of its phones. By now most of those people will have managed to make themselves iPhone owners, so it's time for Apple to work on the rest.


Each of the new iPhones adopts through its design specific aspects of Jony Ive's redesigned iOS 7 software -- the 5s is slick, refined, sophisticated; the 5C is simple, playful, colourful -- and becomes a vehicle to deliver the same experience to people who will likely consider themselves different types of phone user.

Apple

Despite Apple's more recent penchant for monochrome, it has a history of incorporating a veritable rainbow of colour variants into its products, but its choice of colours in this instance are very interesting. The inevitable comparisons have been drawn between the 5c and Nokia's similarly colourful, similarly polycarbonate-clad Lumia range, but in fact Apple's new phone is more reminiscent to a handset most people in the UK have never laid eyes on before: the Xiaomi Mi 2.

In a perhaps not so bizarre coincidence, the Xioami Mi 2 is available in exactly the same colours as the iPhone 5C, and once you've stripped away the logos the two phone look near identical.

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This is no chicken and egg mystery though -- the Mi 2 was available long before the iPhone 5c came out. Neither is it a secret that while the iPhone has flourished worldwide, Apple has struggled to gain a steady footing in China -- the world's biggest smartphone market -- and has been hoping to rectify this. Until now, Xioami has been known as the Apple of China, but Apple is clearly determined to prove that it's perfectly capable of fulfilling this role itself by mounting a direct challenge to its rival.

Features and performance

The iPhone is rather lonely in the four-inch screen bracket these days, with most of its rivals upgrading to bigger, although not necessarily better things. Apple's Retina displays are consistently some of the best on the market and there's no change here. The 640x1,136-pixel screen with its 326 ppi pixel density proving bright and sharp and a joy to use. It is of course exactly the same screen that can be found on the iPhone 5, but this is hardly anything to complain about.

The iPhone 5c's colourful exterior is complemented by the pastels shades of iOS 7. All the new features of Apple's radically redesigned operating system are present here, including Siri's new capabilities (searching Lady Gaga's tweets if that pleaseth you), the new control centre and the updated multitasking and notifications tab.

How the iPhone 5c actually measures up in terms up of performance might be one of the deciding factors as to whether it's the phone for you. In the Geekbench 3 benchmarking tests, the iPhone 5c scored a very reasonable 1,282, putting it pretty much on par with the iPhone 5 at 1,305. This is not a surprising turn of events, given that inside are the same A6 chips and 1GB of RAM.

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That's a cut below Apple's super A7 chip that can be found in the 5s, and it turns out the company has not at all exaggerated the performance abilities of its new tech, as the 5s trounced both the 5 and the 5c, practically doubling their scores to produce a result 2,577.

Figures like that might well sway you to shell out an extra £80 for the 5s given that the price of the 5c will already cause a significant hole to form in your pocket. It's hard to say exactly quite how much you'll be able to notice that difference in daily use though, and bear in mind that the 5c is no slowcoach. To provide a little more perspective, the iPhones 4 and 4sscored 206 and 412 respectively.

The iPhones 5 and 5c also performed similarly on the Sunspider web browser test, both powering across the finishing line in 716 milliseconds. The 5s beat them again with a score 338ms (lower numbers are better here), but to put that in context the iPhone 4 took 2,686ms to complete the same test.

Unlike the iPhone 5 -- which had limited 4G functionality -- the 5c also supports 4G across multiple frequencies, offering you a slick browsing experience with super-speedy download and upload times across all 4G networks.

As for battery life, the iPhone 5c supposedly offers an improved experience again, but while you won't find yourself constantly reaching for a charger, you will need to be prepared to hook it up at least once a day with normal use. I found I could squeeze a little longer out of it if I kept usage fairly light.

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Photography

Just as iPhones have always offered top-notch screens, their cameras also tend to be some of the best around. Phone cameras have come along way recently though, with the HTC One's four-megapixel camera competing with the likes of the 41-megapixel snapper on the

Nokia Lumia 1020 and a massive improvements across the board in low-light capabilities.

The iPhone 5c therefore has a lot to prove, although unlike the 5s the camera itself doesn't offer any new tech other than a sapphire lens cover, and is pretty much the same 8-megapixel snapper we've seen before on the iPhone 5. What is new however is the much-improved iOS 7 camera app and a better forward-facing camera.

In a selfie comparison shot with the iPhone 4, the iPhone 5c really proves it's capable of capturing a fine portrait of Wired.co.uk editor Nate Lanxon.

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Katie Collins

Similarly, while shots from the iPhone 5c's main camera tended to be ever so slightly darker than those from the iPhone 4, tones were warmer, colours more true to life and it proved capable of capturing a much more balanced overall image.

Katie Collins

Katie Collins

In HDR mode, the camera also proved it could capture a lovely bright shot, adding detail to the sky on an extremely dreary day with lots of white cloud and picking our colours, giving them plenty of extra oomph.

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Katie Collins

Katie Collins

In low light the 5c is, perhaps not surprisingly, far superior to the 4. Not only did it capture a much brighter shot, but noise was greatly reduced.

Katie Collins

Katie Collins

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Video-wise the 5c shoots 1080p at 30fps and 720p at 30fps on the forward-facing camera, but you won't get the pretty cool slow-motion shooting tool available on the 5s. There's no doubt at all that the iPhone 5s offers a better, more refined camera experience than the 5s, but it's still far from a slouch in this department. If photography is really important to you, you might want to pay a little more for the 5s, but it's unlikely that you'll be disappointed with the results from the 5c.

Conclusion

There's no doubt about it -- the iPhone 5s is a smashing phone, but it sits in a funny place in Apple's product range. It feels very much like the iPhone 5 has been rebundled here for a specific set of customers. There's obviously little point in upgrading to the 5c from an iPhone 5, and even 4s users looking to upgrade might be happier with the future-proof specs and aluminium casing of the 5s, but if you're new to iPhone, this handset offers a high-end experience and a brand new design without the £500+ price tag.

For an extra £80 or so though you can get your hands on the iPhone 5s, which offers double the performance and a superior camera, all tucked inside a design that probably won't date as quickly with bonus fingerprint-scanning tech.

There is always the possibility of course that you'll be able to pick up a refurbished iPhone 5 for a good chunk less than the 5c for the time being, and while it might not quite measure up to its repackaged successor, it does offer the same standard of performance on iOS 7 and features the more classic iPhone design cues.

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Let's not forget the iPhone's main Android rivals of course.

It's unlikely if you're interested in owning an iPhone that you'll be particularly enamoured with many of the phablet-esque phones like the recent Sony Xperia Z Ultra and the latest Samsung Galaxy Note, but the Xperia Z1 and the Galaxy S4 are phone pretty much at the top of their game and can be picked up for £410 and £435 respectively. You can also get the a 32GB HTC One -- one of the best phones of the year -- for £499.

That's £50 cheaper than the 32GB version of the 5C.


If you don't love the design of this phone, then you might be better off investing in an alternative Apple handset, particularly the 5s if you can stretch to it. If however you quite like the look of the 5c, you won't be at all let down by the powerful components and top-notch camera buried inside, as well as the refined user experience offered by iOS 7.

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