Apple's new iPhone 5s is courting controversy again, after the company acknowledged that some units of the phone have a manufacturing defect that is leading to the battery draining faster.
The Cupertino giant
told the New York Times that a small number of iPhone 5s units have a manufacturing defect which is causing the issue, and that the company will replace these defective units.
"We recently discovered a manufacturing issue affecting a very limited number of iPhone 5s devices that could cause the battery to take longer to charge or result in reduced battery life," Teresa Brewer, an Apple spokeswoman. "We are reaching out to customers with affected phones and will provide them with a replacement phone."
Apple has not specified the number of units affected by the issue or the particular batch that's affected.
Earlier this month, it was reported that motion sensors including the Level, Gyroscope, Compass, and Accelerometer on the Apple iPhone 5s were not working properly and delivering inaccurate results. It was discovered that the readings taken with the iPhone 5s sensors were way off compared to the ones taken by the iPhone 5's sensor. However, Apple released the iOS 7.0.3 update that brought a fix for an accelerometer calibration issue. The update also improved the system stability of the phone when using iWork apps, following some reports of the iPhone 5s crashing while using the apps.
Apple had
unveiled the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on September 10, and had
announced record breaking sales of nine million, just three days after the launch of the new generation devices on September 20.
The iPhone 5s comes with a number of improvements including a new A7 chip that supports 64-bit computing, a faster graphics processor, M7 co-processor for tracking data from the different sensors of the phone, a fingerprint scanner on its Home button, and a much improved camera with support for a burst mode and slow motion video capture, in addition to a dual-LED flash.
The iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c
will debut in India on 1 November. The iPhone 5s will be available for Rs. 53,500 for the 16GB model, Rs. 62,500 for the 32GB model and Rs. 71,500 for the 64GB model. iPhone 5c will be available for Rs. 41,900 for the 16GB model and Rs. 53,500 for the 32GB model. All prices are inclusive of all taxes.
iPhone 5s in pictures