[Shane R]

Originally Posted by afv011

I have read in multiple places that safari keeps reloading tabs due to lack of memory, so there seems to be a reasoning for more than 1GB of RAM. More RAM would also make the phone more fluid as it does not have to reload from disk previous apps that had to be killed to make room for new ones, making app switching that much faster.

Also, if the phone does not have dedicated video memory and uses the 1GB for the GPU, then having a bigger resolution would take a larger chunk out of your available memory for the OS and apps.

iOS7 is already pretty fluid on the 5S, both graphically and in switching apps (I can't comment on iOS 8). I suspect they forewent further gains to save on battery life and to keep the pricing within a certain window.

This is a bit of a concern with the 5.5" version though:

We didn’t see any visible blurriness as a result of this scaling, though some UI animations and transitions seemed to be a little choppier than they are on the iPhone 6 or our iPhone 5S—we’ll need to wait for our full review to see just how the A8 chip handles the resolution change.

Only occasion that I've seen that, so I'd wait for the reviews before taking it as gospel.