Hands on pictures

Maps and navigation

Maps is a contentious area of the Apple ecosystem since its rather embarrassing launch which saw the whole of the internet go about spotting the myriad of errors in the software. It lead to an Apple climb down and CEO Tim Cook recommending users try alternative solutions until a fix in place.

A year on and we're still waiting for the major overhaul to take place - Maps is still determined when we type "Luton" that we mean a tiny village in Devon rather and the large Bedfordshire based town.

Some things have been fixed, Doncaster for example is now spelt correctly, but there's still quite some way for Apple Maps to go before it can seriously challenge Google Maps, with elements like public transport integration not on offer.

Of course it's not always bad news and for the most part Maps works pretty well, and it's able to comprehend where we are and where we want to go.

The colour palette is pleasing to the eye and everything is very easy to read with various points of interest marked on the map including restaurants, hospitals and train stations.

Maps load very quickly on the iPhone 5S, be it over Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G, so there's no awkward waiting around when you fire up the app, and unlike the 5C, the 5S was very fast at locating us. We're surprised about this, as the location chips inside should be the same, but clearly the A7 chip is playing a part here.

Turn Wi-Fi off and try and locate yourself when indoors and the 5S struggles to really nail down your location, placing a large blue halo round the location dot, which is usually in the right vicinity.

As well as the stock map view you can also view the world in a series of satellite images or choice a hybrid option which sees roads laid on top of the satellite snaps.

However unlike Google Maps, the TomTom powered Apple maps doesn't have the StreetView option, nor does it sport any public transport information, so if you want to know which bus or train to get you'll have to go else where.

The 3D Flyover option which Apple lauded at the launch of Maps last year is nice to view when you're over a city which has actually supports it, but for the majority of the world there are no 3D renders present and thus the mode is merely there for aesthetic value.

While there are some gremlins on the navigation side of things, in general Apple Maps is a very capable turn-by-turn sat nav alternative - and you'd hope so considering TomTom is behind the technology.

Tap in your destination and pin pops up with a little blue square next to the address details with an estimated drive time - tap this and Maps will load the route from your current location, plus provide two alternatives.

Select the route you want and hit "Drive" and you'll be launched into the navigation screen, where the blue route stands out well on the grey roads making it really clear where you need to go - especially useful at tricky junctions.

There's an extra clever little feature on offer here too: with the M7 co-processor on board, the iPhone 5S was able to work out when we had stopped driving and began walking, showing that the phone's internal motion sensors are up to snuff.

We did note once during our testing that the GPS signal caused the phone to freeze when jumping out to the email app, but this was a singular instance which we've not been able to replicate since. We'll update this part of the review if we encounter such a thing again.

We did find the text display the time and distance left on our journey and our estimated time of arrival were a bit small at the top of the screen and we found ourselves squinting at the screen to read them - not particularly safe when you're driving.

The stereo speakers on the base of the iPhone 5S allow for loud, clear spoken instructions from a robotic male voice, and the volume really impressed us as we've found many phones struggle to be heard over the noise of the car.

Gallery

The gallery app on the iPhone 5S is something that stays very true to Apple's ethos, one of displaying all your photos in one place but organising them in easy to find places.

For instance, when you open up the redesigned Photos app, you're taken through a few options. You can view your album, your Photostream through iCloud or the myriad videos you'll have nabbed during your time with the device.

However, once into your camera roll, you can organise by moments in time, location or just general collections, with only a couple of taps being needed to make it easier to share the content with a social network.

Obviously from this app you're able to do more, such as create a shared photostream for the family to enjoy, or you can open Apple maps to see properly where the photos were taken. And if you want to zoom out a bit then all you need to do is tap the top left-hand icon, taking you from 'Collections' to 'Years' which means that if you've got millions of snaps then you can see them grouped properly together.

If you're not happy with the photos you have you can always tap the "edit" button when viewing a particular picture to take you into a basic editor.

From there you have various options including crop, rotate, red eye removal, eight filters and auto-enhance.

It's certainly not as detailed as Apple's iPhoto app - which can be downloaded for free from the App Store - but for the occasional photography this simple editor will suffice

Airdrop

If you're interested in sharing these photos with others, the Airdrop is your friend here. Apple's new proprietary connection is one that's pretty darn good and beats the pants of the likes of S Beam on a Galaxy phone or the general need to pull ones hair out when setting up Wi-Fi direct.

In this option you simply tap the photo you want to share, make sure the person you're looking to share it with has a compatible Apple device (and is visible) then tap on the icon of the person that comes up at the bottom in the Control Centre - this works really well and the photo sharing times between the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C were very impressive indeed, using Apple's implementation of the Wi-Fi ad-hoc technology.

It's startling how fast photos beam across, and it's more simple than competitor methods, providing you've made yourself available or accepted other users.

Bluetooth - your days as a data transmission option are starting to draw to a close, unless a newer version of the technology pushes the envelope again.

4G, contacts and calling

The iPhone 5S is nothing more than the 5 when it comes to calling, but with iOS 7 on board as well as a few more LTE bands, it means that it can function on pretty much any next-gen network around the world.

If you're in the UK, this means that you'll be able to connect to 4G on the likes of Vodafone, O2 and Three when their services are all up and running without a worry – something that will have been a hindrance to those wanting to connect to the super speeds with an iPhone 5.

We tested the iPhone 5S on EE's network in the UK, and we were mightily impressed with the results. When there's a full signal, the phone is blisteringly quick over 4G, although when a couple of bars (or spots, now we're in iOS 7 territory) drop off, the speeds can slacken quite measurably too.

However, unlike its predecessor, there's a real feel that the iPhone 5S is a handset designed for 4G – although running at the faster connection does seem to cook the battery somewhat.

Calling

The call quality on the iPhone is nothing to shout about, with the slightly sharper edges of the phone making it even harder to hear people due to reticence to push it closer to your ear hole.

The sound quality emanating from the earpiece is decent without being stonkingly clear and there's not much in the way of audio enhancement to play with. It's worth noting that on rival handsets there's always a lot more that you can do to improve things in this respect.

In terms of the other person being able to hear you, things are more impressive, thanks to three microphones that enable excellent noise cancellation and can pick up a wide level of what you're trying to say.

But therein lies the rub - is that too simplistic? To one person, being able to calibrate the sound levels of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is a great thing to be able to do, and they'll do so willingly. With the iPhone, many prefer simplicity, so the ability to be able to just press a button, make a call with a nice interface and move on will impress many.

There's no smart dialling here though - that really irks as it's an excellent method of getting to your contacts through the dial pad. Android 4.3 now has it baked into the OS, and it feels high time Apple did the same thing.

Facetime has been given a cheeky boost too thanks to the improved front camera, which displays really fast and clear images provided you've got a strong enough connection.

Is it ever going to take over the world in the way voice calling did? Nope, not even with an HD front facing camera. It's better though, and really helps with those lonely hotel trips.

Contacts

The contacts on the iPhone are still rather dismal, and still something that Apple needs to address. We want far more than the list of contacts on offer, despite the list of letters at the side of your address book being very easy to slide down.

It's a lot better than it was, allowing you to enable Facebook and Twitter to update your contacts book with pictures of friends when all the data matches.

But compare that to pretty much any Android phone now and you'll see the disparity: here you have to hope that things match in terms of email or other information and the iPhone will deign to connect them together.

If this fails, it's far from simple to have everyone matched up, so no high-resolution profile pics, no updates on what your friends are doing from within the app, and generally not a lot going on at all.

Apple could do so much more with the matching here, but it's a sticky mess if you want to link anyone together.

It's not a bad contacts system, it just could (and probably will) be so much better in the future.

Touch ID

Now we're getting onto something that's really rather special: the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5S. While obviously unconfirmed, this is likely to be used to the new range of iPad devices and give them a whole new level of functionality – it's much harder to enter a passcode on these two-handed devices.

But enough about the future – what about the now? Touch ID is a system that we didn't expect to see in phones now, with fingerprint scanning relatively written off as being something that was just too cumbersome to implement. Just look at the Motorola Atrix with its back-mounted sensor… that didn't really work.

Well, that's not true with the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5S. It's phenomenal in the way it works, making it possible to have a phone that is as secure as having a passcode, but without the irritation of having to enter it a million times a day.

Press the home button and let your finger rest there, and the phone just opens itself up. It's hard to explain just how cool the motion feels.

Yes, it's not 'properly' secure – there's still a passcode right there for those that don't want to use the fingerprint scanner, and if someone reads that over your shoulder they'll still be able to steal your phone and get in.

This negates the insanity that some are peddling, such as how robbers will be cutting off fingers or forcing users to unlock the phone. Firstly, the sensor is capacitive and therefore needs an actual, alive, finger to use it.

Secondly: this isn't a way of securing national secrets. If someone is that desperate to get into your phone, there are myriad ways. But if you want to avoid pecking out a passcode time and time again, this is a brilliant method of doing it.

Moreover, you can use Touch ID to replace your iTunes password. This is an excellent way of not having to pop in your special word over and over again when you're buying items or downloading certain apps. It might only save a few seconds, but more importantly than that, it's just so goshdarn cool that we can't help but love to do it.

And on the point of security, Apple may have pushed that element further than it needed to – but that should give consumers decent peace of mind.

The Touch ID sensor communicates directly with the stored fingerprint on the A7 chip, and not even the rest of the phone can see it. This means your fingerprint won't get backed up to iCloud and accidentally shared with the world. But you'll never be able to use different digits to open other apps, which would have been awesome from the lock screen.

Imagine being able to press a single digit to the phone to unlock it… OK, that's here now. But then press a different finger and open the music player, and a third will take you straight to your Pocket reader.

It would be an amazing way to do things and show that the iPhone is more built around the user – however, we suspect that Apple is erring on the side of security here, and that's not a bad thing at all.

In terms of setting up your finger recognition, there's nothing to it: press your digit up and down on the sensor and the phone will buzz every time it learns your fingerprint. And not only that, but you're then asked to show the edges of your finger to get a larger image of the print, giving more accuracy.

In practice you can turn your finger or thumb any way you like on the button and it will still register just the same – there are some mis-scans, but on the whole it's really rather excellent and accurate. We like, and this is the shape of things to come on phones, with Apple stealing a rather large march.