iPhone 5S is finally available today. Online orders started at 2:01am and stores opened at 8am. I woke up at 2:15am (unplanned, just happened to wake up) and decided to check the Apple online store, yes the iPhone 5S can be ordered, but the estimated shipping is already 7-10 business days. I have no idea whether this is the standard starting point, or actually a lot of people ordered online around 2:01am and immediately finished the initial stock. Since 7-10 working days is kinda long for iPhone waiting time, then I decided to try my luck queuing in store.
Out of curiosity, I checked Telstra website (my current telco) and it also have iPhone 5S available, but only in space grey and silver. No gold iPhone and they already announced the stock for silver is very limited. My intention is to get either silver or gold, my iPhone 4S is black so I don’t want to get another black-front iPhone. Reading about no gold and very limited silver didn’t sound good for me.
I checked an online forum and read about a discussion of people already queuing. Then I decided which Apple Store I will visit, that I probably still have chance. Then I go back to sleep.
5:30 wake up
5:58 started from home
6:46 get off the tram, time to find an open entrance to the mall
7:00 join the queue, a VERY long queue, at least 100 people in front of me, I hope I can still get gold or silver
7:38 free coffee for everyone
7:42 announcement from the store, no more stock for gold iPhone, sold out, hopefully I can still get silver
7:45 all Apple employees are coming out, giving high-five to everyone in the queue, applause from the audience, and some of them took video
7:50 got the “ticket” for 64gb silver, they’re smart, they can’t open before 8am, but they give tickets to queuing customers so they can track how many want each color, and people won’t stay for nothing if the model they’re after is sold out
8:00 everyone is shouting the countdown… and the store opens !
8:05 thanks to the ticket system, the queue is moving fast
8:10 still queuing, just realized something, a lot of people in the queue are using Galaxy S4 and HTC One
8:14 free mineral water for everyone in the queue
8:33 still queuing, getting closer
8:45 got my new iPhone 5S ! now waiting for sim card replacement (from micro sim to nano sim)
9:00 sim card replacement done
9:05 an Apple employee approached me asking if there’s anything more they can help, then I told them about my Apple wall charger that went off last night, and he told me he can replace it with a new one straight away
9:10 playing around with some demo units of iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S while waiting for my charger replacement
9:12 got my wall charger replacement, brand new, happy customer
9:20 ok, really needs to go home now, my sim card inside my iPhone 4S is already stopped working
10:28 arrived home, time to set up my new phone
Unboxing photos
Since my previous iPhone is iPhone 4S, holding iPhone 5S on my hand feels very different. It’s lighter and thinner. Really love it ! And I’m so glad they keep the screen size in a level I can still hold-and-type using one hand.
Inside the box, we get the iPhone unit, lightning cable, Apple EarPod with remote and mic, and a wall charger. It’s worth to mention that the wall charger is a compact version. Smaller than the usual wall charger with replaceable plug, lighter and handy to carry around. But this new model is not very useful for overseas trip. Well, it’s a trade-off between being compact and being flexible.
Now let’s talk about the actual iPhone 5S unit. The physical differences (from iPhone 5) can be found in 2 locations: the camera flash and the new home button with integrated fingerprint reader. There’s a thin ring around the home button, colored the same as the back color (so mine’s silver).
It took me more than an hour to transfer all my contents from iPhone 4S to the new 5S. Well, considering it’s 64gb and my iPhone 4S was nearly full, I guess the processing time makes sense. It has to copy nearly 60gb of data using USB 2.0 cable, so I wasn’t expecting instant migration from the first place. As usual I would like to remind you to BACKUP your old phone first before starting the migration process.
As soon as I plugged iPhone 5S to my computer, iTunes notifies me that an OS update is available (iOS 7.0.1). A new software on launch day? I guess they must have found serious bug so they need to address it as soon as the phone arrives at customer’s hand. Since the migration process is still in progress, I decided to do one task at a time. First to complete the content transfer from 4S backup. Then I will upgrade my OS later.
After completing the migration process, curiously I played around with the new phone for a while and quickly notice at least one bug that Apple needs to fix immediately: the WiFi connection is unstable, and when the phone is connected to WiFi, the home screen indicator still shows 4G, not the usual WiFi icon.
Upgraded to iOS 7.0.1 and the WiFi problem is now fixed. The WiFi indicator works normally. I’m not sure if there are other problems with the initial OS or not. But I’m glad 7.0.1 update works proper and smooth.
Now everything is ready… time to attach screen protector and case. I have prepared them few weeks before, waiting for 5S to arrive, lol. Having exactly the same form factor with iPhone 5 helped me to get many choices of cases.
Testing time ! Yesterday I thought my iPhone 4S was fast enough. Within few minutes of playing with iPhone 5S, I feel like I can’t go back to iPhone 4S anymore. 5S is very snappy. Some of the “heavy” apps and games I tried run really smooth and fast. iOS 7 in iPhone 5S feels like something entirely different from iOS 7 that runs in my iPhone 4S.
Apple’s default apps feels a lot snappier and responsive than some third-party apps. I guess this is where we get to see 64-bit apps in action. Most third-party apps are not yet optimized for 64-bit architecture. It’ll take a bit of time for this transition from 32-bit to 64-bit.
Now about the most talked feature of iPhone 5S: fingerprint sensor (Touch ID). We can store up to 5 fingers in our iPhone. We can choose any finger. The enrolling process is relatively easy. Once it’s set up, we can now use our fingerprint to open our phones from the lock screen. I tried all possible combinations of finger positions. Most of them are detected properly. And the fingerprint algorithm learns. The more I use it, the more flexible it becomes. When I try a “new” finger placement, sometimes it can’t detect it as my fingerprint. The trick is to use a “proper” finger placement quickly after that so iPhone will sorta believe that the earlier (undetected) fingerprint belongs to the same person and re-learn it. After three attempts of using incorrect finger, iPhone will bring us to the usual PIN screen so we have to use PIN this time.
If you set up a PIN and Touch ID, you can still choose whether you want to enter PIN or use fingerprint. This way, it’s still possible for family member to use our phone by using the PIN (so they don’t ask for our fingerprint every-time).
iPhone 5S is said to have much better camera than the previous iPhone 5S. I haven’t got enough time to play around with it so far. The new motion detection feature from M7 co-processor also need a bit of more effort to test. Will probably write something about these new improvements later in a separate post.
In case you’re wondering, I intentionally won’t write much about iOS 7 in this post as I have written a separate post about it.
Overall, I’m very very impressed with this iPhone 5S. Would be super happy to use it as my main phone for at least a year. Then I’ll decide whether to upgrade to iPhone 6 or not, lol.
Some random comments:
1. Even though I was never interested in iPhone 5C, I did played around with demo units in Apple Store. And the result is… the plastic doesn’t feel good in my opinion. The back color attracts smudges very easily and it doesn’t feel good on our hand. It feels just as cheap as Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4. Bad design, Apple !
2. The different SIM card size from micro SIM to nano SIM surprisingly became a problem. Apple was being really helpful by providing the service to swap SIM card, but one thing I didn’t plan is… I was left with no working phone on the way back home. The old SIM card in my iPhone 4S already not active. The new iPhone 5S is still sealed in box, as I plan to unbox it at home. So, no Internet, no voice call, no text messages for about an hour, and my wife was trying to contact me during that time.
3. I don’t really understand why that guy in Sydney is announced as the first iPhone 5S owner in the world. All Apple Stores, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone in Eastern Australia started selling iPhone at exactly the same time: 8am sharp. How come one is faster than the other? Everyone in first place of the line in EACH store should receive their iPhone 5S around the same time.
Leave A Comment