iPhone 5c

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What is the iPhone 5C?
For the first time Apple has changed its phone line-up. The iPhone 5C is a cheaper alternative to the iPhone 5S. Normally Apple just continues to sell older models for those who can’t afford the new flagship phone, this time it has launched two phones at the same time.

Starting at £469 this is not a cheap phone by any stretch. In fact it costs about the same as the iPhone 5, a phone with which it share much of its internals.

The iPhone 5C is enclosed in plastic rather than metal and while it is certainly colourful, does it have anything other than style to bring to the table?

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If you think the iPhone 5C looks a little like a Nokia Lumia phone you’d be right. It takes design inspiration from Nokia’s range, which proved once and for all that a plastic phone needn’t feel cheap. The iPhone 5C is a unibody phone, which means you have no access to the battery, or access to the insides unless you’re willing to fully dismantle it.

The iPhone 5C is a tiny bit wider and 30g heavier than the iPhone 5S so feels a little heftier in your hand. However, you can’t really complain about it being too big or too heavy. At 9mm thick and 132g it is still a slim and light phone.

You have a choice of five colours for the iPhone 5C – pink, blue, yellow, green and white. They’re much more fun to look at than the slightly austere iPhone 5S, but the colours are not dazzlingly bright, they’re more pastel-looking. They’re a little more muted than the Nokia Lumia phones.

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The iPhone 5C feels as immaculately well-made, which you would expect from Apple – there are no gaps or inconsistencies in the border between the plastic back and glass front, no flexing of the body. But glossy plastic was never going to feel as impressive as the aluminium rear of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S.

We also found that the plastic nano SIM slot on the phone’s right edge tends to get a little mucky, spoiling the otherwise impressive consistency of the phone’s colouring – the buttons and mute switch are all colour-matched to the rear.

The iPhone 5C has a strong look, but we’re not as impressed by the official Apple iPhone 5C case. It’s a felt-lined rubbery case with cut-out dots on the rear. Match the colours well and you’ll get a funky look, but the way the dots reveal part of the iPhone logo looks clumsy and the rubbery finish attracts dust and fluff to the plastic body within minutes. The concept is decent, but the execution falls short of the standard set by the phone itself.

SEE ALSO: Best iPhone 5C cases
The placement of the iPhone 5C’s buttons and switches are more-or-less identical to those of the iPhone 5. A mute switch sits on the left edge, alongside the volume buttons, while a power button lives up top. It’s a design that simply works on a phone this size, with every button easily accessible without having to use two hands. This is one of the main benefits of a smaller phone like this – it’s a much less intimidating presence than any high-end Android phone.

If you’re upgrading from a pre-iPhone 5 Apple phone, though, there are some new-ish things to get used to. The iPhone 5C uses a tiny nano SIM, and the Lightning port introduced by the iPhone 5. The port may be a consideration if you have a swanky high-end speaker dock that won’t fit an iPhone 5C – although Apple does offer an adapter for the rather princely sum of £25.

iPhone 5C 1

Unfortunately the iPhone 5C misses out on what’s probably the biggest hardware innovation of the iPhone 5S – the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. This lets you secure your phone against the fingers of any more mischievous friends without using a passcode. It’s a genuinely useful feature, but here you’ll either have to use the passcode or go without that extra layer of protection.
iPhone 5C – Screen
Just like the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S, the iPhone 5C has a 4-inch screen. It’s smaller than every Android phone at the price, but quality-wise it’s excellent.

Side-by-side we couldn’t tell any big differences between this display and the iPhone 5S’s. They use exactly the same type of panel. It’s a top-quality IPS panel that offers superb colour reproduction, excellent contrast and startling peak brightness. iPhone 5C 5

The iPhone 5C uses a 1,136 x 640 pixel screen. The resulting 326ppi pixel density is the same pixel pitch that saw the introduction of the term ‘Retina’ display – meaning so sharp you can’t see the pixels.

Other phones have since far outstripped this pixel density. The HTC One M8 has a 441ppi screen. However, if anyone tells you it’s a reason to buy that phone over the iPhone 5C, they’re wrong. At normal viewing distances there’s little benefit in higher pixel density IPS screens than this. You can only tell much of a difference if you get your eyeballs right up close to the screen – not a good look on the train, and no good for your eyes.

Of course, screen size is an absolutely valid consideration. What the iPhone 5C gains in practicality – it’s so easy to grasp and use one-handed – it loses in other areas. A large screen like the LG G3’s or Samsung Galaxy S5’s offers a better canvas for websites (especially non-mobile ones) and is far, far better as a display for watching videos.

The same could be said for games but, as we’ll cover later, this is made up for by the iPhone’s unbeatable game library.