Apple iPhone 5c : The magic of color

Introduction

The Apple iPhone 5 is gone for good, abandoned and replaced by the fresh iPhone 5c. Initial rumors erroneously suggested that the lowercase letter stands for cheap, but it turned out that the Cupertino-based giant had color on its mind instead.

For the first time ever Apple broke pattern and released not one, but two new iPhones this year. The successor we all knew was coming - the iPhone 5s - is joined by the "unapologetically plastic" iPhone 5c, meaning that we no longer get last year's flagship as the second best iPhone on tap.

On paper, the Apple iPhone 5c stands as basically an iPhone 5 in a shiny new outfit that comes in a number of bright colors. And, if you think about it, that's the most logical thing to do - the colorful iPod lineup has been getting lots of praise on account of looks so it was about time Apple's smartphones got the same treatment. The iPhone 5c is so keen on showing how young and fresh it is, that the traditional black is not among its five paint jobs (white, blue, yellow, green and pink).

There's a catch though. The Apple 5c comes with a glossy plastic body instead of the sleek-looking aluminum chassis of the iPhone 5. The reasons for the switch will probably never be officially revealed, but it could be anything from supply issues to budget, to simply aiming to deliver a fresh new look to match the redesigned iOS 7.

Finding the truth is hardly the point here, though. What we are more interested in is whether the company that repeatedly bashed competitors about cheap plastic phones over the past few years has created a plastic phone that you can be proud to be seen in public with.

Before we continue, here's the Apple iPhone 5c review cheat sheet.

Key features

Quad-band GSM and 3G support with 21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
LTE support where carriers support it and CDMA support when sold by CDMA carriers
4" 16M-color LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 1136px resolution
1.3 GHz dual-core Apple Swift CPU, PowerVR SGX543MP3 GPU, 1GB of LPDDR2 RAM, Apple A6 SoC
iOS 7 with iCloud integration
8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and touch focus
1080p video recording at 30fps
1.2MP secondary front-facing camera
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotspot
Bluetooth 4.0 LE, AirDrop file transfer and sharing between iOS 7-running devices
GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass
16/32 GB storage options
Accelerometer, proximity sensor and a three-axis gyro sensor
Active noise cancellation with a dedicated secondary microphone
Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
Excellent audio output quality
Apple Maps with free voice-guided navigation in 56 countries
Voice recognition, Siri virtual assistant
Supports HD Voice (with carrier support)
FaceTime video calls over Wi-Fi and cellular
Free iWorks office suite
Free iMovie and iPhoto apps