iPhone 5S review

Video on the iPhone 5S isn't anything overly special beyond offering decent footage without having to try very hard. Like the camera there's no optical image stabilisation on board, which means that anything that comes with a shaky hand will have the same judder in the footage.

This is especially apparent when zooming in on the footage when you're filming, which can now be done at the same time.

However, the general clarity and smoothness of the video is impressive and will help you capture the precious moments in high clarity. The only other real option is to turn the LED light on to get some real illumination, but be warned: it's bright.

Slo-mo

Another trick enabled by the A7 chip, slow motion has been added to the iPhone 5S. It enables 120fps capture at 720p resolution, but more importantly you can choose when in the footage to speed up and slow down the action, so if you've got a squirrel falling from the tree you can make it so that only the really hilarious bit is at the slower speed.

It's a really neat system for editing your footage, with little tabs to trim the movie to get rid of any waiting around at the start or the end.

While the effect is cool, it's not something we're particularly bothered about in terms of a killer feature on a smartphone. The results are fun and pleasing, but they don't really make us want to pull out Slow-mo mode all the time.

Especially given it's very hard to share the slow motion video, as you can't just pull it off the phone, with the resulting .MOV file jumping and skipping somewhat when viewed back on a PC.

Instead, you're given the option to share it via Facebook, YouTube or Vimeo, which will export the video at 30fps and deliver the slow motion in tact.

At the moment, there's no way to just take the slow-mo video off the device, or import it into iMovie, to get really creative with it.

So while we like the idea, Slow-Mo left us feeling rather cold.