iPhone 5S Summary

I recently updated my mobile phone contract from Orange to EE. This being due to EE now owning Orange and the Orange network being one of the top network coverage companies. When upgrading I had a choice of several phone and from what I could see and being use to Blackberry’s I thought about going for the Blackberry Q10. However, upon checking with various network providers I found Blackberry had changed the way Blackberry Smart phone work. They out do the iPhone 5S in almost every way with longer battery life, qwerty keypad, micro memory card slot to add up to 16gb extra memory, higher processor speed, and much more. This however, though sounding fantastic had it’s down side. You couldn’t make or receive calls through your wireless internet anymore, the cost of the phone was very expensive unless you planned on paying £40 to £60 per month, scrolling didn’t work as well as one would think and there was even less apps in the Blackberry App World with the new software, as well as some other things which escape me at the moment. So, I decided to go with the IPhone 5S. I will point out that even though I use Apple Macs for my computers, as a designer I found them fantastic and easy to work with. I am however not a fan of previous iPhones or the iPad (There are better tablets out there than the iPad, such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1) . This is due to the fact that I have been prescient in the apple shop on several occasions where I have seen customer after customer come in and complain about both the iPhones and iPads and how easy they had had problems. My choice however was based not just on my research into the iPhone 5S but also because my partner has the iPhone 4S and as she is a journalist, she uses it for anything and everything, from taking video and photos, to texting, emailing, face timing (video chatting) and even using an app as a satnav etc. My partner allowed me to “play” with her iPhone 4S and see how I got on for an hour or so, and I found I stumbled a few times but found after a couple of hours I could navigate the phone with some ease. So… I went with the iPhone 5S which I earlier mentioned and I have found compared to the earlier models, that it is a work of art, nice feel, not bulky at all, quite light weight I thought, big screen and being able to access Facebook and other websites and forum, including emails and the over all experience I have found a pleasure to use the the iPhone 5S. I have noticed however a couple of things I think could be improved upon from a designers point of view.

1. The battery life doesn’t always last a day. My partner bought me a special “Power Bank” which when you have 20% battery power left, you press a button on the front and it will charge your iPhone 5S battery back up to 100%. Which I thought was amazing for £35 from Mobilebiz in Meadowhall Shopping Centre, Sheffield, but they do have stores up and down the country.

2. Not knowing if I am using my wifi signal or 4G sometimes makes me wonder if I am going to use all my data up, so I have to keep checking my online EE account to make sure not over using it.

3. When trying to set a photo or image as the wallpaper or the lock screen, it enlarges the image or photo to a silly size which you can not shrink. I even edited several images and photos on Photoshop and added them to my phone and it still enlarged them. This is a minor thing but could easily fixed with an update from apple.

And my final comment on the iPhone 5S, is I not only set up this blog account but I am posting my blogs from this wonderful little piece of technology 🙂