Apple's colorful iPhone 5C is finally here in five colors, and we take a look at everything it has to offer.
Sarah Mitroff
Sarah Mitroff has worn many hats at CNET, including Senior Mobile Editor and Managing Editor of Health and Wellness. Currently, she is a freelance editor. Throughout her career, she's written about mobile tech, consumer tech, business and startups for Wired, MacWorld, PCWorld, and VentureBeat.
The iPhone 5C is meant to replace the iPhone 5, which Apple will no longer sell. The 5C has nearly identical internal specs to the 5, except that the 5C is slightly heavier and doesn't come with a 64GB storage option.
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Finally, a colorful iPhone
Over the years, we've seen iPods in (almost) every color of the rainbow, but for the iPhone, Apple has stuck with black and white. That changes now with the iPhone 5C, which comes in pink-red, yellow, green, blue, and white.
The color choices are similar to those found on the current iPod Touch, iPod Nano, and iPod Shuffle models.
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Plastic back cover
No glass or aluminum here; the iPhone 5C's back cover is made of a single piece of shiny colored polycarbonate. Apple design head Jony Ive says the 5C is "unapologetically plastic."
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Retina screen
Apple didn't sacrifice screen quality on the 5C, as the phone comes with the well-known Retina Display that makes pixels look nearly invisible.
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iOS 7
Yep, the 5C comes with iOS 7.
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Bottom ports
The bottom of the 5C has all the phone's ports; a headphone minijack, the microphone, Lightning connector, and built-in speaker.
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Reinforced body
To make the 5C strong, it has a steel reinforced structure that also forms the antenna.
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Custom cases
Apple designed custom covers for the 5C made of silicone with a microfiber lining, with cutouts to show off your phone's true color. The cases come in red, yellow, green, blue, black, and white.
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Siri
There were plenty of rumors that Siri wouldn't be on the iPhone 5C, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
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Camera
It's not as powerful as the camera found on the new iPhone 5S, but you'll be able to snap photos just fine with with 5C.
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Internal power
For a lower-end iPhone, the 5C still packs performance, says Apple, thanks to a fast A6 processor.
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LTE, Wi-Fi
The 5C comes with LTE support.
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Environmentally friendly
Apple is playing up that the iPhone 5C was made with green materials.
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A step-down iPhone
Since the 5C is $549 off contract, it's hard to say this is budget iPhone we were waiting for. However, on contract, the iPhone 5C costs $99 for the 16GB model and $199 for 32GB of storage, so it's still cheaper than the new iPhone 5S.
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Preorder and availability
The iPhone 5C will be available for preorder on September 13 and will go on sale on September 20 in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the UK.
