Apple’s brand-new iPhone 5s isn’t dramatically different from last year’s model , but it has at least one major addition: a “Touch ID” sensor. Us human beings are calling it a fingerprint sensor, and it’s built into the phone’s main Home button below the screen. Apple’s Phil Schiller says, “It reads your fingerprint at an entirely new level” — it’s 170 microns in thickness with 500 ppi resolution. According to Cupertino, it “scans sub-epidermal skin layers, ” and can read 360 degrees. As expected, the sensor is actually part of the Home button, making it less of a button and more of a…well, sensor. Using Touch ID, users can authorize purchases in iTunes, the App Store, or in iBooks by simply using their thumbprint (starting in iOS 7, of course). Pretty neat / scary! As rumored , the sensor uses a laser cut sapphire crystal cover; it retains a tactile input for those wary of the sensor wearing down after lengthy use. The sapphire crystal, acting as a lens, takes a highly detailed image of your fingerprint, which Apple says is “never stored on Apple servers or backed up to iCloud.” According to Apple’s official PR on the new phone, Touch ID’s fingerprint info is “encrypted and stored securely in the Secure Enclave inside the A7 chip” (the A7 chip is the new processor at the heart of the 5s ). Apple hasn’t made clear whether Touch ID allows for multiple users on a single iPhone or not, nor has the company said whether you could turn off fingerprint authentication (though we have to presume the answer is yes given previous authentication standards on the iPhone). The fingerprint ID technology was long rumored as heading to 2013’s iPhone following Apple’s acquisition of Authentec last summer . A render of the iPhone 5s outed the new functionality’s name just this week. We’ll have more on Touch ID in our upcoming hands-on live from Cupertino, and you can find all our Apple event coverage from today right here . ” Follow our liveblog for all of the iPhone news as it happens.” %Gallery-slideshow83645% Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds , Software , Mobile , Apple Comments

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iPhone 5s fingerprint sensor called Touch ID, recognizes your thumb on the Home button: here’s how it works and what it does

The hits keep coming from IDF. After showing off svelte new 14nm silicon built for laptops , CEO Brian Krzanich announced a brand new SoC series named Quark. It’s the smallest SoC the company has ever built, one-fifth the size of an Atom chip, and is built upon an open architecture meant so spur its use. Early on in his keynote, Krzanich said that Intel plans to “lead in every segment of computing, ” and Quark is positioned to put Intel in wearables — and, in fact, he even showed off a prototype smartwatch platform Intel constructed to help drive wearable development. And, Intel President Renee James pointed out that Quark’s designed for use in integrated systems, so we’ll be seeing Quark in healthcare and municipal use cases, too. Unfortunately, no details about the new SoC’s capabilities or specs are yet available, but we can give you some shots of Intel’s wearable wristband prototype in our gallery below.%Gallery-slideshow83631% Filed under: Intel Comments

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Intel announces Quark system on a chip, the company’s smallest to date

We heard rumblings a few weeks ago that Apple’s streaming service was due to launch this month and now it seems those reports were true. The folks in Cupertino just announced that iTunes Radio will launch on September 18th in tandem with a redesigned iOS 7 . The ability to create custom stations based on individual music tastes and personal iTunes libraries will hit Apple devices in a week’s time. Of course, you’ll need a $25 per year iTunes Match subscription to keep listening sessions ad-free , otherwise you’ll be prone to regular interruptions of that Yacht Rock station every few minutes. Follow our liveblog for all of the iPhone news as it happens. Filed under: Internet , Software , Apple Comments

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iTunes Radio launches September 18th alongside the release of iOS 7

Ladies and gentleman, the moment you’ve all been waiting for . As expected, this afternoon’s day-brightening news (or part of it , at least) arrived in Cupertino in the form of a brand-new handset. CEO Tim Cook took to the stage at Apple HQ to introduce the world to the iPhone 5S, the second of two handsets announced today. The new phone follows the number / letter naming scheme set in place way back in twenty ‘o nine with the introduction of the 3GS and carried on with 2011’s 4S . As with those handsets, the new device’s name implies that this round is something of an iterative update to last year’s iPhone 5 . According to Phil Schiller, the handset is ” the most forward-thinking phone we’ve ever created.” As expected, it’s set to arrive in three colors: black, silver and gold. The 5S is crafted in high-grade aluminum with chamfered edges. What the the “S” stand for? Well, inside, you’ll find a 64-bit A7 processor that features twice the number of transistors as its predecessor, clocking in at more than one billion, according to Schiller — the CPU and GPU, meanwhile, promise speeds twice as fast. There’s OpenGL ES 3.0 on-board, but the next-gen handset still promises, thankfully, to remain compatible with the 32-bit apps of yesteryear. Developing… %Gallery-slideshow83641% ” Follow our liveblog for all of the iPhone news as it happens.” Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Apple Comments

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Apple introduces the iPhone 5S

Apple has just laid claim to a world first: 64-bit processing inside a smartphone. The new A7 processor will power the iPhone 5S with a “desktop-class architecture” consisting of over 1 billion transistors. Developing… Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Apple Comments

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Apple unveils A7 chip, brings 64-bit processing to the iPhone 5S