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THE 5S AND the 5C were the two new iPhones launched at a the usual glitzy Apple presentation in California today.
The 5S is to have one of the most awaited additions to an iPhone to date, ‘Touch ID’. A fingerprint identity sensor was rumoured ahead of the the previous announcement of the iPhone 5 but has now been included as standard on the top of the range 5s, but not on the 5C .
The new fingerprint sensor is located on the phone’s home button and unlocks the phone automatically when a touched by the user. It can also be used to verify a purchase from Apple’s iTunes store.
Multiple user fingerprints can be stored on the phone according to Apple who also claim that all fingerprint information is encrypted and kept in the new A7 chip within the phone. Apple also say that the information is not saved on their servers nor on their online memory service iCloud.
“Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world. I’ts always with you and no two are exactly alike, ” according to Dan Riccio, Apple’s hardware engineering senior vice-president.
Riccio adds that the sensor is one of the most ‘advanced pieces of hardware and software’ they’ve ever put in their technology:
It in essense take a high resolution image of your fingerprint on the sub-epidermal layers of your skin and then intelligently analyses this information with an remarklable degree of detail and percision.
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Yeah, hang on and I give my fingerprint to the NSA…
Kept in local storage, not uploaded to any servers. Only available on the single device.
If you’ve been to the states they already have the fingerprints of every finger anyway. And if you’ve been through some other airports they already have your face and iris.
Lucky them…. I’ve lovely eyes!
“Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world” and as Snowden revealed just what they’re capable of recently, they will get those fingerprints, its easier if they’re given them.
Germany’s Speigel claimed recently that it had seen documents showing the NSA can tap into any and all smartphone information and has separate teams working on each OS. In some cases they claimed this was done without the knowledge of the Smartphone companies.
@ Jed I. Knight ….. why are you so desperate to hide your finger print? If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve nothing to hide… I’ll bet Jed I. Knight isn’t even your real name!
“These are not the an’Droids you’re looking for…”
Seriously Michael?
Such great times for intelligence service. Once upon a time it was hard to get information on people. Remember Michael Collins hiding in plain sight noone knew him.
Every one of you is a G mans wet dream can just hack your fackbook and phone they know all your little secrets. That you cheated on wife/husband that you had abortion. That you like being whipped and called piggy boy.
Oh yes they know and its held until its needed. Intetesting a future leader aboit to condem the usa or shut down Shannon but hold on we know this irish leader likes wearing women knickers.
Eh what??
I think someone just bought that script…
Who’d like being called piggy boy? That’s sick
OK, read a little bit in to data mining and see just what they NSA and the like can do. I haven’t committed any crime (yet) so I have nothing to fear, but at the same time I value my privacy and the right to it.
If you use a store rewards card then everything you buy in your average family shopping is known, those marketing products you get from your reward card every few months aren’t random or just sent to everyone but can be tailored specifically to your marketing group. Or to you.
If you use a credit or debit card, and who doesn’t, then once again what you buy is known and you can receive specific marketing tailored to suit you.
If you buy anything online you’ll often reveal specific information about yourself, insurances forms and the like can reveal quite a lot, online banking etc. Sometimes you may be asked to fill out a short survey for being such a good customer, again revealing more information about yourself.
Remember all of this information, including that carried out on a smartphone, is routinely datamined by intelligence agencies like the NSA. The problem is that all this sounds so much like a script from “Men in Black” that we laugh and dismiss it offhand but it isn’t fiction. The Americans have admitted much of this and Snowden’s other revelations.
So when a company like Apple, or any other, produces a smartphone with a fingerprint scanner you can be certain those fingerprints will end up on a database along will every other piece of information they can get. No thanks, I’ll pass.
“If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about”
Except if you have nothing to hide, and you have done nothing wrong – then you have the right to expect that your privacy will be protected, that you will not be treated like a criminal and have all of your personal information stored by intelligence agencies. For an agency such as the NSA to be invading this privacy is basically treating you as guilty until proven innocent.
If you have no problem with that, then I’m sorry, but you are a fool.
Michael, how can you be so flippant about this? So you have nothing to hide. Clap, clap, well done. You’re missing the point entirely.
Go ahead and feed the beast. The way you think is exactly the way they want you to think. I bet you’re the kind of person that tags your location on every post on Facebook, too.
@Muhamed: Yes, because local storage is completely inaccessible by network connection at all times… You keep believing that.
You’d be surprised, Gearoid. There was an episode of CSI where the suspects were fetishists who dressed as horses and I don’t think the programme makers plucked the scenario out of thin air.
There used to be a programme on Discovery Channel about forensic detectives, I don’t know how many times it had the stories from CSI Vegas on it..
Made me wonder – was Jerry Bruckheimer watching this cheap Discovery show for inspiration, or were Discovery passing off CSI storylines as real life?
I can see the headline, “Woman has iPhone stolen and finger chopped off by thug on bike wearing grey hoodie.”
This technology coming from the same people that told you Dublin Zoo was in Temple Bar..
Obviously you haven’t seen Temple Bar on a Saturday night…
Having given the security/privacy implications of this long and careful consideration, I have decided that the answer is to use your big toe print rather than your finger print.
I may open a security consultancy.
Ah it’s a bit soon, you’re just dipping your toe in the water really…
Billions spent in research and all they come up with is coloured plastic.
I’m a big apple fan but damn this is getting ridiculous.
Alright bud, do ya wanna buy an iPhone 5s and I’ll throw in the owner’s thumb for free
Can’t wait for the day when thousands of fanboys are locked out of their iPhones. They can’t even get maps right!
Really disappointed with the iPhone 5s I think the fingerprint sensor is a joke, and they couldn’t even be bothered to upgrade the camera.
They have actually
When it comes to camera territory, Apple has traditionally been a gold standard, highly consistent in all scenarios without fussing with controls.
Here, Apple once again challenges the field with a lot of built-in logic that makes for automatic adjustments of everything from white balance to the color temperature of the new, dual-tone LED flash.
In addition, Apple gives its iPhone 5S a five-element lens that Apple designed in-house. Its sensor size is 15 percent larger than before, and it packs in a f/2.2 aperture. The result? More light for theoretically better pictures.
You won’t find more megapixels in this version of the iSight camera, which means images top out at 8 megapixels. However, you’ll find an all-new burst mode that snares snaps at a rate of 10 frames per second when you hold your finger down on the shutter.
You can also take shots that span a 28-megapixel panorama. Apple will now automatically adjust exposure as you move, which is a nice touch. There’s auto image stabilization as well.
The iPhone 5S once again ups the ante with a 1080p HD camera that captures video at the usual 30fps as well as a staggering 120fps for slow-motion video. In the app, slow-mo can be selected for various parts of the clip you shot by sliding little markers, much like editing a video clip in iMovie.
Yeah @Sean but does it come in white… ..?
Nokia habe superceded this long before now. Sorry but it’s true.
They’ve upgraded it to an 8 megapixel camera
Samsung does all that in the Galaxy Note 2 and the macro is better than with my DSLR!
When is this expected out in Ireland? I won’t be buying just wondering! #teamandroid
September 20th in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the UK. In December, that list will expand to include more than 100 countries. [so Ireland probably December then, unless you import it...]
October 10th
Wishful thinking but could this mean it would be pointless for someone to rob it if it could only be unlocked by a fingerprint?? I’m sure they’d have ways around it but has potential for that I would have thought.
Eh… Is that not the point in the first place?
So does this mean I can’t use this phone with my fancy new iPhone touch gloves…
Now apple will have your credit card, personal email, fingerprint, address, date of birth, what music and movies you like, mothers maiden name, first pet’s name and first car you drove.
If they were hackers there would be war!!
On the flip side, they’ll have more information on you than the CIA
Send them a dna sample to finish…
Can’t see them letting you ‘extract a DNA sample’ in public… You’ll go blind!
Not worth upgrading from i5
Im using an iphone 4 since it came out.
Really havent seen the need to go near the 4s or even the 5 so if funds are right around xmas i’ll consider buying the 5s outright.
Tbh if there was a newer ipad out by xmas (inevitable really) i would much prefer to opt for that.
599 for the 5C, what happened to cheap? That’s Sim Free or pay as you go price, utter madness.
That not $99 for the 5c?
On a 2 year contract
In America on a 2yr contract, unless we have AT&T, Sprint, Verizon along with the dollar as our currency?
Apparently there is a glitch that if you turn the phone off and back on it will work with another finger print…. (Ssssshhhh)
When are Apple going to run out of new features? All it is is a slightly better resolution, slightly better camera, slightly better light, slightly bigger screen.
The iphone is so over priced you can get equally as good phones and better phones for less! People are paying for the brand. It’s fashionable.
I guess people assume iphones are the best phone because they’re the most expensive but that’s simply not the case.
Not to mention apple products are bad after a couple of years because the apps are too up to date that you can’t get them. I have a first generation ipod touch and I literally can’t get any apps. I have a first generation ipad and I can’t have some apps like youtube for example because I dont have the correct ios. It’s ridiculous.
Operating systems do progress as time goes on & the ipad needs to be able to run them smoothly processor wise or else they’d be crashing all the time.
Apps are also increasing in size too so its not all apples fault, 3rd parties develop apps for the current devices specs and then things move on further, its natural for technology to become obsolete but i know what youre getting at, there could be a bit more shelf life with the products/OS’s.
Refurbs from apples website are a great way of picking up cheaper as good as new products.
Well if ye don’t like apple don’t buy it simple as!!! Haters
Yet apple will still probably sell 40-50 million of both the 5s & 5c before the end of the year. Every phone launch is more successful than the previous. For a company on the slide & falling behind they are doing quite well at it.
#paranoia
Big Brother !!!!!!!
Ah things were so much simpler when I had my Nokia 5110.
NSA won’t even have to step outside a room to get your fingerprints
The newest finger print to name database in the world.
have your say