Utter nonsense
Every camera will get a flare if you point it at the sun. Some lenses produce attractive flare, usually longer focal length lenses. Some lenses flare attractively, like the old-time Angénieux zoom that I shot with for years. Canon lenses tended to get little squares in the flare aberrations. Looked good in a night cityscape.
I suspect this artifact is produced by a very, very tiny lens, and made purple by the way that Apple has backlit the sensor, which gives it extremely good low light trueness. But designing a lens, particularly a very short lens in a very thin phone, is a matter of tradeoffs.
This is a silly game, really. Each thing that anybody with a grudge can say, "Apple made a mistake" will be produced in a phony criminal proceeding. What they did was a tradeoff. What you got was a camera that takes extraordinarily good pictures in low light, and whose pictures are extremely faithful in color with a wide dynamic range. For a camera you carry around in a phone. The iPhone 5 camera compares very well to other cameras. I think it's the best in the phone business, and you can go up the "regular" camera quality scale pretty high. Oh, and it's a movie camera too.
If you're taking a picture into the sun hoping for one of those psychedelic flares like a lot of the shots in Woodstock? Don't try it, it won't work.
