Supply and demand only relative. It's not as simple as many thinks.
64 bit processor? dedicated motion sensing processor? fingerprint sensor? Those are all simple things blown out of proportion by apple. Apple marketing team is known for blowing simple things out of proportion and many people fall for it.
Wake up people. It's a dated phone refreshed using simple gimmics.
It's the very opposite of a dated phone. It is perhaps the most future-proof smart phone currently available (or nearly available). If you read the
Anand Tech review --which is an actual review by someone who actually does understand hardware, instead of just someone spouting out opinions based on conjecture or a simplistic and incomplete understanding-- then you will see just how impressive the A7 with Cyclone cores (the successor to Swift) really is, and how the move to 64 bit actually
does matter, even now, but will matter even more in 2-3 years. On the whole, the CPU seems to be about twice as fast as the A6, and the GPU equally as impressive. And Anand thinks that this is actually the RIGHT time for Apple to make the move to 64 bit, given the trends.
Yes, you can
argue that it "won't make a difference" right now for the "average consumer" but:
1. That's just not true, as loading web pages is something even the average consumer does (just as an example) and it happens a lot faster on the 5S than the 5.
and
2. Right now quickly fades into the past. People made the same comments about the 4S, but now, two years on, the 4S is still viable while the 4 really doesn't have the hardware to run iOS 7, Siri, do voice to text, etc. And there's pretty much a consensus on that at this point, now that emotions and haters-gonna-hate have calmed down. In two years, the 5S will still be viable while the 5 may be starting to show it's age.
Does that mean people who own the 5 should upgrade? Heck no! They'd be smart to wait until the 6, I think. Does that mean that the 5S is a "dated phone"? Heck no! If you have the 4S (or, like me, the 4) the 5S is a great update.
It takes FAR more work and technical prowess to build something like the A7 with
custom designed and hand laid out cores than just to slap a bigger screen or higher MP count camera in a phone. As Anand says in his Final Words:
The iPhone 5s is quite possibly the biggest S-update we've ever seen from Apple. I remember walking out of the venue during Apple's iPhone 5 launch and being blown away by the level of innovation, at the platform/silicon level, that Apple crammed into the iPhone 5. What got me last time was that Apple built their own ARM based CPU architecture from the ground up, while I understand that doesn't matter for the majority of consumers - it's no less of an achievement in my eyes. At the same time I remember reading through a sea of disappointment on Twitter - users hoping for more from Apple with the iPhone 5. If you fell into that group last time, there's no way you're going to be impressed by the iPhone 5s. For me however, there's quite a bit to be excited about.
The A7 SoC is seriously impressive. Apple calls it a desktop-class SoC, but I'd rather refer to it as something capable of competing with the best Intel has to offer in this market. In many cases the A7's dual cores were competitive with Intel's recently announced Bay Trail SoC. Web browsing is ultimately where I noticed the A7's performance the most. As long as I was on a good internet connection, web pages just appeared after resolving DNS. The A7's GPU performance is also insanely good - more than enough for anything you could possibly throw at the iPhone 5s today, and fast enough to help keep this device feeling quick for a while.