It’s apple week here at Brit HQ, and in addition to creative ways to cut apples, healthy grain salad with apples and pears, and an apple cider cocktail (stay tuned for that tomorrow!), we’re excited about the iPhone news from Apple (with a capital A) today. Did you miss it? Well then, read on to hear what launched and what we’re particularly head-over-heels excited about.
First things first—colorful iPhones! WHAT. You might call us color junkies, so these new hues for the iPhone 5c are right up our alley. We’re especially swooning for that watermelon pink and lime green. Plus, these new phones start at only $99 — thank you, Apple, for sparing our wallets on this one.
While the new colors guarantee you don’t necessarily need a case to stand out, if you do still want a case, we’re guessing there will be a lot of new cut out versions—like the one Apple previewed today—to show off the underlying color. We’ve also got lots of clever new DIY iPhone case ideas on the brain. Maybe we should start by 3D printing one!
As far as the new iPhone 5s goes, the gold rumors were right. We’re pretty excited that they are going metallic after years of basic black and white. It provides a good contrast to the candy colored iPhone 5c and is a chic choice for the higher price point. I’m pretty sure I’m going with the gold option, how about you?
Next up, the fingerprint scanner. This is by far the COOLEST THING IN THE WORLD. Not only will it keep your phone more secure (it’s a lot harder for thefts to fake a fingerprint than it is to figure out a passcode), it’s also going to be a major time-saver. Gone are the days of mistyping your password because you’re moving too fast. It might just save a few seconds each time, but it will really add up. Plus, you can forget entering your App Store password ever again when you’re buying music, books or videos. Fingerprints for the win!
But what about those times when you need to have someone else access your device? You’ll actually be able to authorize other users to unlock your phone. We’ll be eager to check out the settings to see if you can restrict what each user can access. (It’s probably best not to give your child’s finger access to the iTunes store—we advise getting them this kid-friendly “iPhone” instead.) Either way, we’re excited to see more of the biometrics trend. Are you more comfortable using your fingerprint or heartbeat to authenticate your devices?
You know we love our mobile photos, so these updates gave us a good case of the goosebumps. The iPhone camera’s panorama mode can now take a whopping 28-megapixel photo. That’s like, huge. That’s like, print-and-hang-a-ginormous-photo-on-your-wall huge. We can’t wait to see the beautiful images that will come!
We’re especially excited about burst mode, a feature we’ll be using to get the best candid shots of our friends (especially the little ones!). It takes a ton of images at once and is able to detect the sharpest, most clear image for you to save. No more worrying about closed eyes or quick, blurry movements. We’ll just have to be sure to trash the bad ones to save space on the phone—though they have a few measures in place to make that easier. Your favorite photo editing apps just got a major upgrade with the simple ability to take a better photo from the start.
Okay, we’re cheating here by going past the designated “4 things we’re excited about,” but there are a couple more things that are giving us some serious tech tingles.
First and foremost, these phones are soooo fast. They can switch in between apps and process images/videos as fast as many computers can–a significant improvement from the last version.
We’re also happy that many well-known paid apps like iWork and iMovie will finally be free when iOS 7 launches next week. (We’ll also have to update our favorite iPhone hacks for the new operating system!) It will finally be easier to create beautiful presentations and stories on the go. And anything that helps us be creative while freeing us from our desks is a win in our book.
Last but not least, we can’t end this post without mentioning how intrigued we are to try the new iTunes Radio. While this may be “blurring lines” for music startups Spotify and Pandora may be in for some stiff competition, but at least we the consumers are going to get to enjoy a little bit more free music in our lives. Win!
If this post isn’t enough and you STILL want more (it’s okay if you do, we’re Apple geeks, too), you can still enjoy the full keynote video here.
What do you think of the new iPhones announced today? Will you be buying one? If so, tell us which one in the comments!
