Apple unveils two new iPhones the 5S and 5C

Apple unveils two new iPhones the 5S and 5C

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during Tuesday's iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C event at the Apple campus in Cupertino, California.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Apple rolls out two new iPhones

The iPhone 5S and The iPhone 5C which will be less expensive.

For the first time ever, Apple unveiled two new iPhones on Tuesday, a traditional upgrade of its iPhone 5 as well as a simpler, cheaper version.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C are a reaction to a changing smartphone market.

"Business has become so large that this year we are going to replace the iPhone 5 and we're going to replace it with not one, but two new designs," Cook said. "This allows us to serve even more customers."

The iPhone 5C was the first phone demoed at Tuesday's event at Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters.

the low-cost iPhone, dubbed the iPhone 5C. Starting at $99, Apple says the iPhone 5C features the same technology that’s in the iPhone 5 but will be available in various colors. Users will also see a higher capacity battery, so you should get better endurance.

The iPhone 5C features are:

8-megapixel camera

Apple’s A6 chip

4-inch Retina display.

A hard-coated polycarbonate material.

The phone will be available in five different color options including green, white, blue, red and yellow.

Apple’s low-cost iPhone certainly isn’t the first smartphone to go the colorful polycarbonate route. The Nokia Lumia line started this trend a while ago. However, Apple claims that the iPhone 5C’s design is as seamless as it is solid.

The 16GB version will cost $99 on a two-year contract, while the 32GB edition will sell for $199 on contract.

A likely candidate could be the company's anticipated "iWatch." Apple is all but certain to join the emerging smartwatch market that Samsung entered last week with its Galaxy Gear device.

Also, Apple has also long been rumored to be working on a TV set.

Passcodes on an iPhone or iPad

With Apple's interest in a smart watch gaining renewed attention, there has been a considerable amount of speculation about what the company might try to do with such a device. Some of the speculation has pointed out that a watch could provide a good alternative to traditional passcodes by using watch proximity to grant a user access to systems and apps.

 

Apple is apparently looking at other alternatives for traditional password security as well, as highlighted in a patent application published late last week and spotted by Patently Apple.

 

The patent application describes a system that would display one or more photos stored on a device and ask the owner to identify them. The document mentions voice entry as one method of identification, using the example of a photo from the owner's Contacts database.

For example, after displaying an image that depicts a face of the user's sister Jane, the user may speak aloud, "Jane" … Alternatively, step 120 might also include displaying … a set of names. Then, as part of step 130, the user selects one of the displayed names that the user believes identifies the object.

The patent application suggests that the user would be able to choose the number of photos required to access the device, in the same way they already choose between simple and complex passcodes on an iPhone or iPad.

 

Apple previously filed for a patent on an approach similar to Android's Face Unlock feature, where the phone unlocks when it recognizes the face of the owner through the front-facing camera, though it was discovered soon after it debuted that the system could be easily fooled by using a photo of the owner displayed on another handset. Additional innovations such as a "Liveness Check" requiring that the user blink for Face Unlock to function have, however, been developed to increase security.