News - Apple iPhone 5C ‘budget’ model is £469, iPhone 5S from £549

[HEXUS]

Both of these smartphones will be available from 20th September.

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[1stRaven]

Got to love the Nokia tweet and with the prices of the IPhone 5S, I can see pushing for my companies phones to go to windows now. So much cheaper and you don't appear to loss that much in performance.

[Valinor]

When I first saw a picture of the 5C I thought that it looked really ugly, but (fortunately) it was a picture with the case on. Apart from that, I wonder how secure the fingerprint reader will be - considering how many fingerprints my phone usually has on it I'd imagine it'd be somewhat easy to fool the sensor with one of those.

[BiblicalShower]

Surely, if you didn't already have one, instead of getting the 5C you could just wait a few weeks after the 5S launch when an 'older' iPhone 5 and neon coloured case from fleabay would work out cheaper than a new 5C?

[Rob_B]

$469, the 32GB version at £549.

?

£469 for the 16GB 5C, so slightly less than a 5 is now, cheaper to manufacture (by how much we don't know) sounds like business as usual then.
Then again I didn't expect it to come in at say £300 considering it is technically an iPhone 5 so isn't going to undercut it.

[genkifd]

what a disappointment 5S that is. finger print - really & Camera upgrades come on - get a better and bigger screen...

iOS 7 better be something special not a catchup to andriod.

[circuitmonkey]

iOS, welcome to fragmentation

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

£469 for a budget model?? WTF??

[circuitmonkey]

When I first saw a picture of the 5C I thought that it looked really ugly, but (fortunately) it was a picture with the case on. Apart from that, I wonder how secure the fingerprint reader will be - considering how many fingerprints my phone usually has on it I'd imagine it'd be somewhat easy to fool the sensor with one of those.

I think I read that it was a subdermal sensor, so I would think quite secure

[BiblicalShower]

what a disappointment 5S that is. finger print - really & Camera upgrades come on - get a better and bigger screen...

iOS 7 better be something special not a catchup to andriod.

They wouldn't have a screen type/dimension change for an incremental model. I'd expect the next series to have different size and price models. E.g. iPhone 6C, 6, and 6L(or something for large/big/etc)

[Zerox]

The iPhone 5C is pretty much what we expected in looks and specification. What you get is basically the current iPhone 5 model dressed up in Nokia style colourful polycarbonate shells.

Cunning.

Keep the production line for iPhone 5 guts rolling, avoid the cost of producing different components (I would have expected the "budget model" to have worse specs than the iPhone 5), keeping costs down. Then switch to producing a plastic case, it being cheaper to produce than a metal case and at the same time being less likely to have manufacturing defects (the iPhone 5's metal case was notorious for aesthetic defects), hence less money wasted on fixing said defects.

All done whilst only knocking ~ £40 off an iPhone 5.

To add to that point I completely agree with Cat, and any other sane human being. A "budget" iPhone using last year's technology is still more expensive than premium Android and WP8 devices. Far too expensive for what it actually is.

[Rob_B]

I don't think Apple did, nor ever will, refer to the 5C as 'budget', the public has said that, Apple will simply call it a cheaper alternative to the 5S that is as good as their previous premium handset.

All this Apple hate is getting as boring as an Apple phone refresh! (See what I did there?)

Considering there are a few top end plastic phones from other manufacturers and the 5S isn't a million miles away price wise from an S4 or other top end phone at release then I see no issue, buy one or don't, it's fairly simple.

NB/ I own an iphone 4 and am planning on changing to some mid range handset within my slim budget, it won't be an iphone again unless someone sells me a 5 for £150!

[bridges009]

I bought my 'flagship' HTC One release month for £480.

[Rob_B]

Good for you £480 to me is still an obscene amount to pay for a phone, genuinely no offence intended there I'm just saying we all have different wants and priorities.

We'd all be moaning if we had no choice of what phones we bought. Apple offer a product at a price, same as any company. I don't buy £200 pairs of jeans or £5000 watches but some people do and it's none of my damn business what they spend their money on.

[najiro]

[machkris]

True that.. or else its just not worth it..