Apple's launch of its new iPhones on Sept. 10 came as a big yawn. There were no innovations that people are going to dump their existing handsets for – Apple or Android – and the company tried to make a virtue out of charging nearly as much for a plastic case as a metal one. The company needs to realize that it is déjà vu when it comes to Android, just like the Windows PC vs. Mac "war" back in the '80s. Faster innovation and more product variety – anathema to the steady, purist design-centric company – is needed if it hopes to compete with Samsung and the rest of the Android world in the handset market.
The high-end iPhone 5S comes with a 64-bit CPU and accompanying OS, a fingerprint ID scanner, an optimized "motion coprocessor" to save battery power and a better camera. Given security concerns these days, a fingerprint ID scanner is a good idea, but the concept has been implemented on non-Apple laptops for a while.
Of all the new bells and whistles, the M7 motion coprocessor might be the best out of the lot. A lot of emphasis was placed on how the 5S phone uses the M7 to track physical activity for power efficiency, but I'm more impressed with its integrated ability to sense how fast the phone is moving use that information for better power management. If the phone hasn't moved for a while, there's less network pinging. If you're in a moving vehicle, it won't ask you to join Wi-Fi networks you may be passing while you're driving down the road.
A 64-bit CPU seems to be overkill, but in combination with an upgraded CMOS camera and software, the new iSight camera will give photo junkies an interesting choice between the iPhone 5S and the Nokia Lumia 1020, especially with burst and slow-motion modes for still images and video respectively.
But people are clamoring for bigger screens, not faster CPUs. Buyers would like better cameras, but there is only so much improvement you can put into a camera phone before they reach for a dedicated picture/video-taking device.
And there's the iPhone 5C. Seriously, "C" as in "Cheaper"? With a two year contract, you'll pay $100 up front or $550 without a contact lock-in. Sure it's colorful, but the Nokia Lumia family managed to offer plenty of pretty color options with decent camera options about a year ago – and can be purchased at significantly lower cost than the 5C. Of course, Windows Phone isn't exactly iOS, but for $100 more up front on a two-year contract, you can jump from the 5C to the 5S and get all the extra bells and whistles of the fingerprint scanner, M7 motion coprocessor, and the extra photo processing modes.
Apple tried to present the barely-lower-cost 5C design as " beautifully, unapologetically plastic." But again, I'm left with the stark fact for $100 more, I can get a rugged metal case 5S with all the trimmings.
Compare these two finely crafted and design-hyped phones with the flurry of products coming out of Samsung. Last week, Samsung introduced the Galaxy Gear smartwatch along with a newer, bigger Galaxy Note phone and yet another, bigger-screen Galaxy Note tablet. By most accounts, the smartwatch needs work and Samsung provides a mix of additional applications on top of Android ranging from useful to bizarre. Samsung may not have perfected the design and software of last week's releases to 100 percent, but most people are more than happy with an 80 percent solution today at 80 percent or lower of the price of an Apple solution. While Apple continues plugging away at 100 percent perfection, the next iteration of Samsung products will move the bar to a 90 percent solution while continuing to offer better pricing.
At the end of the day, if Apple can't crank out products faster (as well as update the old ones faster, like its languishing laptops), it will lose to Samsung and the rest of the Android world in smartphones and tablets.
Edited by
Alisen Downey 
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