Apple iPhone 5c review: The color of magic

User interface (continued)

Do Not Disturb is, as expected, still an integral part of the iOS 7. It gives users further control on notifications, or rather their suppression. If turned on, it will mute incoming calls or alerts. You can allow calls from your favorite contacts and have the option to set a specific time interval in which you won't get any notifications.

Do Not Disturb mode settings

There's a dedicated toggle to activate the DND feature and it can be customized in the Notifications submenu. When Do Not Disturb is on, a crescent icon appears next to the clock in the status bar.

According to Apple, iOS 7 offers multi-tasking for all apps. Previously the true multi-tasking was reserved only for navigation or music streaming apps, the rest had to go in suspend mode.

Now, this multi-tasking for all apps will surely drain the battery faster than Apple would have liked, so there is a catch. Yes, all apps will work in the background, but the iOS will learn which one of them you use most often and when.

Let's say you open the Facebook app every morning and don't use it for the rest of the day. The iOS will soon learn that and will optimize the app to work according to your schedule until you change it. This means most of the day and night the app will still be in suspend mode (push notifications will work of course), but the iOS will run Facebook shortly before your alarm goes on and load all the content. That way when you open it, your news feed will be already updated.

We noticed that apps also update in the background when push notifications come in. This is a part of what Apple calls opportunistic updates - the iPhone waits until a data connection is available and starts the updates then, so it doesn't need to activate the connection on another occasion and waste your battery.

We haven't spent enough time with iOS to give a proper judgment on how well the new multitasking works, but once we do we'll duly update this article.

All apps that use Cellular/Wi-Fi connection and can work in the background are listed under Settings -> General -> Background App refresh.

Background App refresh

The task-switcher interface is invoked with a double tap on the Home key. It looks a lot like the webOS cards of old and, more recently, the HTC Sense Task switcher - all apps are presented with cards that you can swipe up to close. Each card has the respective app icon so you can easily recognize what's what.

Multitasking in action

The multitasking UI works in both portrait and landscape mode, but you cannot see more than three cards at a time. It's one of the limitations of the card interface and we suspect this is why HTC went for a different task switcher on the One, but here's hoping that Apple will at least fix the landscape mode down the line. By the way, you can close all three visible apps on the multi-tasking screen by swiping over all of them simultaneously with three of your fingers.

The iOS 7 Settings menu has the same layout as in previous versions but updated with the new flat and borderless look.

Besides the Background App Refresh, the iOS 7 offers even better control over the apps that use mobile data. The Cellular tab offers detailed cellular data breakdown by apps and services, allowing you to properly manage your resources.

Settings • Cellular Data settings

Another thing worth mentioning is the Vimeo and Flickr integration in addition to Twitter and Facebook. Once you enter your account details in the settings you can upload your photos straight to your Flickr gallery, while your videos will go to your Vimeo. You just need to hit the share key on a picture or a video and use the dedicated Flickr/Vimeo icon.

Sharing on Flickr and Vimeo

The last major change about the user interface is the Back gesture available in all iOS 7 default apps (maybe developers will be able to extend the support to third-party apps after launch). Whether you are in settings, App Store, Messages, Notes, Reminders, Safari, etc. a swipe from the left side of the screen will take you one step back.

Performance

As we said, the Apple iPhone 5c is running on the last year's Apple A6 chipset. It is a still very snappy smartphone and the iOS 7 runs buttery smooth, as usual. The A6 features a custom-developed dual-core CPU (which shares many of its features with ARM Cortex-A15 CPUs), clocked at 1.3GHz. It matches the scores of most of the quad-core smartphones out there running on the Snapdragon S4 Pro.

First, we ran the new Geekbech 3 test to see how the CPU and memory is doing. The iPhone 5c scored the same as the iPhone 5 and exactly half the iPhone 5s scores. As you can see Apple A6 is a good match for the quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chipsets, but falls behind the Snapdragon 600 and 800 devices.

Geekbench 3

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  2670
• Sony Xperia Z1
  2638
• Apple iPhone 5s
  2561
• LG G2
  2243
• HTC One
  1972
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  1869
• LG Optimus G
  1623
• Huawei Ascend P6
  1315
• Apple iPhone 5
  1296
• LG Nexus 4
  1288
• Apple iPhone 5c
  1280
• HTC Butterfly
  1257
• Oppo R819
  1047
• HTC One mini
  887

We also ran the iOS version of Linpack. The iPhone 5c is on par with the iPhone 5, while the iPhone 5s, just as Apple promises, does twice better.

Linpack

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 5s
  970
• Apple iPhone 5
  546
• Apple iPhone 5c
  532

After that we did the multi-platform GFX Benchmark. The iPhone 5c has identical results with the iPhone 5 and is on par with the Adreno 320 GPU inside the quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chipsets powering the last year's droid flagships on the Egypt test, but falls behind them on the T-Rex benchmark.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia Z1
  60
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  60
• Apple iPhone 5s
  56
• LG G2
  54
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  43
• HTC Butterfly S
  42
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  41
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  41
• HTC One
  37
• Oppo Find 5
  32
• Google Nexus 4
  32
• Sony Xperia Z
  31
• Sony Xperia ZL
  31
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Apple iPhone 5
  30
• LG Optimus G Pro
  30
• Apple iPhone 5c
  29
• Apple iPhone 5
  29
• LG Optimus G
  21
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  17
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• HTC One mini
  15
• HTC One X
  11

GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 5s
  23
• Sony Xperia Z1
  23
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  23
• LG G2
  22
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  17.1
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  17.1
• Apple iPad 4
  16.8
• HTC Butterfly S
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  16
• Google Nexus 10
  13.9
• LG Optimus G
  13.9
• Sony Xperia Z
  13.5
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  13
• Sony Xperia ZL
  12.8
• Apple iPhone 5c
  6.9
• Apple iPhone 5
  6.9
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  6.4
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  6.3
• HTC One mini
  5.6
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  4.9

Finally we put the iPhone 5c through the SunSpider and BrowerMark benchmarks to test the Safari's Java Script and overall browsing performance. The iPhone 5, 5c and 5s trio running on the iOS 7 occupied the first spots in our charts, showing that Apple has done a great job of optimizing its browser.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Apple iPhone 5s
  403
• Apple iPhone 5
  694
• Apple iPhone 5c
  704
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  750
• Sony Xperia Z1
  845
• LG G2
  908
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  1046
• HTC One
  1174
• LG Optimus G
  1293
• HTC One mini
  1375
• LG Nexus 4
  1379
• HTC Butterfly
  1397
• Oppo R819
  1423
• Huawei Ascend P6
  3858

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 5s
  3549
• Apple iPhone 5
  2825
• Apple iPhone 5c
  2799
• LG G2
  2718
• LG Optimus G
  2555
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  2438
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  2419
• Sony Xperia Z1
  2398
• HTC Butterfly S
  2378
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  2338
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2314
• HTC One
  2262
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2170
• HTC One mini
  2164
• Sony Xperia ZL
  2107
• Sony Xperia Z
  2093
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1801
• Oppo Find 5
  1797
• Nexus 4
  1794
• Nokia Lumia 920
  1774
• Google Nexus 10
  1773
• HTC Butterfly
  1475
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1247

Benchmark scores are one thing, but what matters more is that iOS 7 runs buttery smooth on the iPhone 5c with no lags or delays. Loading times might be longer than we would have liked with some apps, but the overall experience is very solid.