News - Roundup of iPhone 5S rumours inc. the dual-flash and A7 chip

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Also the Apple iPhone 5 ranks as slowest flagship smartphone in a new Which? survey.

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Read more.

JUST ANNOUNCED - New feature: Paint that doesnt scratch off from your "Premium" iPhone !

Wont be July for release. Earliest I am thinking is September, or may co-incide with the release of iOS7 in 'fall'.

It's about time Apple screwed over somebody else for CPU production....expect price rises for graphics cards shortly! ;)

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Other smartphones in the Which? tests, which assessed seven phones in total, were the HTC One, Sony Xperia Z, Google Nexus 4, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and BlackBerry Z10

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Strange selection - where are the Windows Phone devices? If I was running this test then I think I would have been tempted to swap out the Xperia for a Lumia 920/925 and the Note 2 for the HTC 8S.

I've been looking for a new smartphone for el missus and was tempted towards the iPhone5, but to be honest the high prices now have me thinking that Windows Phone might be a better option. Madam's requirements are two-fold: simple to use and very long battery life - especially on standby.

Long battery life on standby? That's going to be your sticking point as NO smartphone I can think of quickly has what I'd call a LONG standby battery time. Windows phone seems to be the quickest for doing things like texting etc. to me, but my S3 is quicker at photo processing than an iPhone 5 from my rough tests like instragram

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Originally Posted by crossy

Strange selection - where are the Windows Phone devices? If I was running this test then I think I would have been tempted to swap out the Xperia for a Lumia 920/925 and the Note 2 for the HTC 8S.

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I'd like to have seen the Lumia 920/925 additionally included rather than swapped in, the 8S maybe included. Also shame not to see the S3 or Galaxy Nexus included as a point of comparison with newer platforms.

It is interesting people mention that consumers are being swayed more and more by the camera of the phone, yet no mention of Nokia in this space.

If the roumers are true of the 42 megapixel pureview sensor in a fortnight, I wonder if they will still not take any note.

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

It is interesting people mention that consumers are being swayed more and more by the camera of the phone, yet no mention of Nokia in this space.

If the roumers are true of the 42 megapixel pureview sensor in a fortnight, I wonder if they will still not take any note.

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Improvements on camera's on phones will be the next selling point for the next 24 months. Nokia and Samsung have both new high end phones with powerful camera lenses due soon.

CPU's / GPU's Ram, storage etc etc has all reached its peak in the stakes of making the better phone. The hardware is ahead of the software, only bench marks tell the difference..

Lots more iPhone 5S components have shown up on Slashgear

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Originally Posted by 3dcandy

Long battery life on standby? That's going to be your sticking point as NO smartphone I can think of quickly has what I'd call a LONG standby battery time. Windows phone seems to be the quickest for doing things like texting etc. to me, but my S3 is quicker at photo processing than an iPhone 5 from my rough tests like instragram

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Darn. I can't see her being much impressed if she's got to charge every other day even if the phone's stuck in a drawer. That said, I would have thought 3-4 days on "standby" would have been achievable. Heck, my old Xperia X10 could manage three and a bit.

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

It is interesting people mention that consumers are being swayed more and more by the camera of the phone, yet no mention of Nokia in this space. If the rumours are true of the 42 megapixel pureview sensor in a fortnight, I wonder if they will still not take any note.

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More and more people are using their mobiles (and large tablets ffs) to replace cheap digital cameras, and given that everything else on the leading smartphones is pretty similar, I think you're correct in that camera capabilities are the next battleground. The Samsung S4 Zoom is too "camera" for me - I think that something akin to one of the camera with internal zoom optics would be preferable to most people. Although to do that folks are going to have accept either pathetic battery life or something a lot thicker than the "After Eight mint thickness" form factor that the manufacturers seem to favour.

I think there's still some "mindshare" that Nokia need to win in that people still don't think of Nokia as having modern smartphones. This probably being because they stuck with Symbian for too darned long. To me though, each generation of Nokia device is getting better than the last - so much so that I'm seriously considering ditching Android for my S3 replacement - despite being a "loyalist".

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Originally Posted by crossy

Darn. I can't see her being much impressed if she's got to charge every other day even if the phone's stuck in a drawer. That said, I would have thought 3-4 days on "standby" would have been achievable. Heck, my old Xperia X10 could manage three and a bit.

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My work issued Samsung Galaxy Ace+ can do 5+ days sat at home. It's always got a perfect signal thanks to the Vodafone Sure Signal box, Wifi is off and power saver is on. It gets very little use. I could probably stretch it a bit more by tuning off the "push email" from out Exchange server as I have that account on my OneX as well (much better phone and software than the Samsung) so only need it if work call or text me.

If it's stuck in a drawer maybe - but I know people who have Ace's etc. and they get 2 days tops with taking them out and about with them. The constant searching for signal and whatever soon brings the life down. However if it's in a drawer at home I really see little point in getting her a smartphone, or am I missing something?

Ace != Ace Plus. Also, it depends on how much it's used, settings, signal, etc. Constantly waking the phone to check for messages etc will use some power, as will a phone trying to get a lock on a decent signal - locking it to 2G only for example might help. The screen of a modern smartphone is often the largest load, especially if it's bright outside so it maxes the backlight to compensate.

A smartphone shouldn't really be much less efficient than a basic phone at doing 'nothing' because of power gating etc, and smartphones generally have larger batteries anyway. Also, people tend to actually *use* smartphones a lot more than basic phones, but that's frequently ignored when comparing battery life to their 3310 which had a basic, always-on, dot-matrix display, drawing on the order of microamps.

The craze for thinness, and demand for battery life, are incompatible. Unfortunately, there's still a demand for form over function. Maybe we'll see some more MFRs (like Motorola) offer 'maxi' versions of phones for people who don't care about an extra bit of depth in exchange for vastly improved battery life? It would be another way to differentiate from competitors at least! That ZeroLemon battery for the S4 is a decent idea too, but it would be nice if the phone MFR released such things.

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Originally Posted by 3dcandy

It's about time Apple screwed over somebody else for CPU production....expect price rises for graphics cards shortly! ;)

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I wouldn't worry about it too much, a competitive market like fabbing tends to self-regulate around such problems fairly quickly. If TSMC really don't have enough capacity because of Apple, and end up screwing over their long-standing existing customers (which they claim to avoid doing), with significantly increased prices for example, AMD and Nvidia can always ditch them for a competitor. If Apple really did move everything from Samsung, they'd have spare capacity for other customers.

However, aside from echoed hype, the the story doesn't seem nearly as dramatic. From what I've read, TSMC rebuffed Apple's attempts to reserve a large amount of their capacity, and agreed to a slow ramp of 20nm parts i.e. some remaining with Samsung. And Samsung apparently won another contract for 14nm.

TSMC can't just magic up capacity at short notice, and giving priority to a new, volatile customer is a risky business.

Oh and there are also rumours about Apple considering GloFo.