As perfect as the iPhone 5s is in feel, shape, display, performance, platform, sound, quality and general glow, it’s not quite perfect. As with any new and shiny Apple technology that hits the market, leaving many customers empty-handed as the devices often sell out initially (as the gold 5s did just this year), there are bound to be troubles.
This last launch of the 5c and 5s generations of iPhone is no different. Though the 5s has made us giddy with its finely tuned fingerprint ID sensor, smooth and transparent iOS 7, slow-motion video recording ability and new grown-up colors, it has some issues of its very own.
Those users who did manage to get their hands on a 5s model are experiencing an increase in app crashes when using certain apps within the iPhone’s interface. While reports of app crashes were at only 1% for the models 5 and 5c, 5s users have tracked a 2% app crash rate, making the possibility of an app’s failure almost double.
But tech researchers have realized what a blessing in disguise this trouble really is. The reason certain apps are having hiccups when running is all because of the mega-beast of a 64-bit A7 processing chip within the device. Many app developers simply haven’t had a chance to test or run their materials on such a high powered chip before, because it is truly the first of its kind to be seen on a smart phone.
The wrinkles will inevitably be ironed out by app tweakers and creators soon enough, but rest assured that the problem is due to your iPhone being too far ahead of its time, not having a serious error.
Another little flaw on the glistening iPhone 5s screen is an occurrence within iWork. Hard laboring customers report double tapping on the home button when in the iWork app suite to switch over to a new task, and having their motion result in the iPhone going blue, giving up, and restarting. That’s clearly not supposed to happen.
It’s been discovered that there are a couple ways around this glitch: users who back out to their file list instead of the double tap won’t experience the “blue screen of death”, or users can disable the auto-synchronization of iCloud to iWork to prevent the problem. In the short term future, an Apple software update to iOS 7 should be able to help 5s phones avoid this bug.
Other annoyances that iPhone 5s owners have found are with the advanced animation of iOS 7, which may in fact be too advanced for some people’s liking. The constantly moving 3D icons on top of the slightly swaying background in crystal clarity has now been doctor-proven to make people nauseous, or seasick with too much viewing time.
Speaking of being a little tipsy, another dissatisfaction common among 5s users is the accuracy of calibration tools built into the system, such as the gyroscope, level, compass and accelerometer. Apparently virtually every phone is coming up a few degrees short, to the right or to the left of reality, which could be a problem of hardware or software origination.
One may be able to forgive Apple for these few minor mishaps when we think about the quantity of innovation wrapped up in the 5s – not only is it an entirely new handset, but also contains the release of iOS 7, which has a mind of its own.
The somewhat controversial new ecosystem, packed with tight, but possibly breakable, security features and never before seen features has become the talk of the town. Those issues that can’t be forgotten will hopefully be fixed in the coming updates of iOS 7.