IPhone 5C shipped with iOS 7. The iPhone 5C was sold at a discounted price point in comparison to the 5S: unlike Apple's usual practice of lowering the price of the previous model upon release of a new version, the iPhone 5 was explicitly discontinued and replaced by the 5C. On September 9, 2014, the 16 and 32 GB iPhone 5C models were replaced by the 8 GB model with the announcement of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. On September 9, 2015, the 8 GB version was discontinued when the iPhone 6S was announced. The iPhone 5C was redesigned using
IPhone 5S took rival Android smartphone makers by surprise, particularly Qualcomm whose own 64-bit system-on-chip was not released until 2015. Most reviewers recommended the iPhone 5S over the iPhone 5C which was released at the same time. The 5C retained almost the same hardware as the discontinued iPhone 5, while the iPhone 5S featured substantially improved performance/features thanks to its new 64-bit A7 processor, as well as extra storage space, all for a relatively small additional upfront cost over the iPhone 5C (US$650 versus US$550 in March 2014). This was especially the case when iOS 8 was released and both iPhone 5S