So yesterday Apple officially revealed their latest new phones – iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s. While much of the announcement had long since been leaked by the supply chain (so much for the secrecy of Jobs, welcome to the openness of Cook), there were still a few surprises – really only on the iPhone5s. The biggest, in my opinion, was the 64 bit architecture and the two chip design (A7 and M7). This should allow developers access to more memory, and with the M7 access to provide sensor data in a very low power consumption state. From a user perspective, that means we can do more and more quantified self activities (think of your FitBit or Jawbone Up), with minimal impact. We know that these types of devices are more and more popular, but being able to just have it all in one device means as a software developer you can now provide this feature without having to develop the hardware.

The improvement on the camera will bring the iPhone5s to the level of many of the other high end mobile phones, so while it is cool, it will probably have a short life of importance as new Android devices are coming out almost weekly.

So as a developer, the iPhone5s will allow for new, cool apps, but the question will be: How popular will it be verses the slightly cheaper iPhone5c? How long before Apple makes the finger print reader available for your apps? If there is a long delay between new APIs and mass adoption of the iPhone5s, then the new announcement should get you more potential customers, but you are best sticking with features available across the iPhone 4S, and iPhone 5/5C. (Still not a bad market, but not as exciting).

Do you plan on using features unique to the iPhone5S, or is iOS7 good enough without M7 chip?