Apple iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C Official, With Sept. 20 Availability

Apple unveiled the colorful $99 iPhone 5C and the super-fast  and -secure iPhone 5S. The only surprise left? Special guest Elvis Costello.

Apple, as anticipated, introduced two new iPhones—the colorful iPhone 5C and a flagship iPhone 5S—at a Sept. 10 press event on its Cupertino, Calif., campus.

Both phones will be available Sept. 20, and the iPhone 5C can be preordered starting Sept. 13.

The iPhone 5C, again as expected, looks nearly identical to the iPhone 5, but its housing is a "hard-coated polycarbonate"—hard plastic, to you and me—that will come in five colors: happy, children's-birthday-party-shades of green, white, blue, pink and yellow. Apple has made wallpapers and details within iOS 7, the operating system both phones run, to match the new exterior colors.

Apple, like its rivals, has focused on camera technology. The 5C will get a new Facetime HD camera, an 8-megapixel rear camera with improved "backside illumination" and a "five-element lens." IOS 7 also enables users to easily move between camera lenses by simply swiping on the display.

The iPhone 5C was also given a slightly larger battery and improved power efficiency, though it runs the same processor as the current iPhone 5 (Apple's A6 processor).

The 5C will run on more Long-Term Evolution (LTE) bands than any other smartphone in the world—and while it will be available in China the same day as in the United States (another first), there was no mention of whether that will include China Mobile, the world's largest carrier and China's only top-tier carrier not yet to sell an iPhone.

For those around the world without the budget for the iPhone 5S, Apple basically repainted the house (in the nicest way), put up some new curtains and updated the appliances. Or, as Apple design guru Jony Ive put it, "It's remarkable when something feels familiar and yet is new at the same time. That's the iPhone 5C."

A 16GB model will sell for $99 with a two-year purchase, and a 32GB model will sell for $199. New rubber cases with circles cut out to show off the color of the phone will be priced at $29.

The Apple iPhone 5S

As for the iPhone 5S, it, too, is everything that indiscreet sources have led us to look forward to.

It's made of a "high-grade aluminum with chamfered edges" and will come in silver gray and, yes, gold.

It runs a new chip, the A7. It's a 64-bit chip, which is a world-first on a smartphone. Apple showed off a graphics performance chart that nudged upward slowly from its first iPhone through the iPhone 4, took a jump with the iPhone 4S, a leap with the iPhone 5 and skyrocketed with the 5S.

The iPhone 5S's CPU and graphics are each twice as fast as the iPhone 5, while the CPU is 40 times faster than the original iPhone.

To continue on the issue of speed for a moment, the iPhone 5S also runs OpenGL ES 3.0, which translates to: If you're a gamer, you're psyched. Infinity Blade III will be available alongside the iPhone 5S, which Apple promises will be a gaming experience like no other.

Further, the 5S features a new part, a motion coprocessor, called the M7, which continually measures motion and will enable a new generation of health- and fitness-related apps. (Among the latter will be a new Nike+ Move app.)