iPhone 5S review

When it comes to applications the App Store on the iPhone 5S really only has one competitor in the form of Google Play, and it's fair to say that the App Store still comes out on top in terms of quality - if not quantity.

At last count earlier this year, Apple confirmed it had over 900,000 applications in its App Store, so there's plenty for you to choose from including business related content, fitness apps and games.

The store itself is simple to navigate with various categories to drill down into to find the apps best suited to you, and the Top Charts shows you which ones are the most popular at the moment - and ultimately the ones which are worth downloading.

You can download a maximum of three applications simultaneously on the iPhone 5S, letting you get your favourite apps onto the phone even quicker.

If you select more than three to download the others will wait in the wings on your homescreen and will commence downloading when another has finished.

Apps such as Clock, Calendar, Weather, Calculator and Compass are all self explanatory, intuitive and have been given a visual reboot thanks to iOS 7.

The Passbook app arrived with iOS 6 last year and provides you with a storage area for all your loyalty and gift cards, cinema tickets and airplane boarding passes.

It's scope is limited depending on which region you live in and there's only a handful of applications which current support the Passbook way of life - although most of the major airlines have tie ins with the service, as do the likes of Starbucks, AirBnB and yPlan.

Passbook seems like the perfect opportunity to work in NFC to the iPhone ecosystem, but calls for the contactless technology have continued to fall on deaf ears over at Apple - the wait goes on, and looks like it may do so forever.

In short Passbook has a lot of potential, it just hasn't been realised by Apple or app developers yet.

Overall, many apps in the store need something of a refresh to make sure they play nicely with iOS 7. For instance: GMail still uses the old keyboard from iOS 6. Netflix and Adidas MiCoach won't recognise the phone. Some games will crash where the ran fine on the iPhone 5.

We're sure this will happen soon, and many may not even notice it, so we'll be checking back and updating the review in the near future.

Siri

Siri makes a return to the iPhone arena on the iPhone 5S and thanks to the iOS 7 update it's got a few new tricks up its sleeve - including the ability for you to choose whether it's a woman's or man's dulcet tones which ask you "what can I help you with?"

Just hold down the home button to activate Siri, or hold down the central button on the earpods cable if you're in need of some hands-free action.

In fact, now iOS 7.1 has landed you can hold down the home button and as long as it stays pressed Siri will listen. When you let go, the app will automatically start processing your request (and if it's voice dictation it's stunningly accurate).

All the usual commands are present, from making a call and writing a text to setting a reminder to buy milk and finding out if you need to take an umbrella with you - because looking out of the window is difficult.

You can ask your virtual assistant to launch applications - although we found this a little unnecessary - and with the help of WolframAlpha you can ask poignant questions such as "how many days until Christmas?" or "how far away is the moon?" It's enlightening stuff.

We still think Siri trumps the Google Now offering in Android, but it's usefulness varies from country to country - with the best service available in the States where far more services are intertwined with the personal assistant.

Siri has become more useful with iOS 7, there's little disputing that, and the range of answers and information it can give is inching closer to day by day use. It's not great for some things, especially outside of the US, but we don't hate it as much any more. That's a win.

While Apple's own business orientated applications, aimed at taking on Microsoft's Office suite and Google Docs, don't come pre-installed on the iPhone 5S it's worth noting these apps are now available to download free on all newly purchased iPhones.

This means you can get access to Pages (a word processor), Keynote (a PowerPoint rival) and Numbers (basically Excel) free of charge, which will be a godsend for anyone looking to use the iPhone 5S for business. You'll also get iPhoto and iMovie for free too, and really does supercharge the iPhone when it comes to being a fully-formed device right out of the box.

All your documents are backed up to iCloud as well, meaning they'll be available on any of your iDevices or Macs - plus you can also access them via any web browser by going to the iCloud website.

Let's face it: if you want the best apps experience out there, then Apple still has it. While the top end of Android devices are pretty universal in their slick UI and power for apps, Google Play still has to deal with so much fragmentation.

Google has done a fantastic job at managing to overcome this problem, but its rare we'll download an app on an iPhone and an Android device and not be more impressed by the UI (if perhaps not always the functionality) on the iPhone or iPad.