Claim: The iPhone 5C was compared to the discontinued 5S.

The iPhone 5C -LRB- marketed with a stylized lowercase ` c ' as iPhone 5c -RRB- is a smartphone that was designed and marketed by Apple Inc. . The device was part of the iPhone series and was unveiled on September 10 , 2013 , and released on September 20 , 2013 , along with its higher-end counterpart , the iPhone 5S .   The iPhone 5C is a variant of the iPhone 5 , with similar hardware specifications but a hard-coated polycarbonate shell instead of the aluminium of the original iPhone 5 . The iPhone 5C was available in several color options , and shipped with iOS 7 . The iPhone 5C was sold at a discounted price point in comparison to the 5S : unlike Apple 's prior 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 upon the announcement of the iPhone 6S .