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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
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Apple introduces the iPhone 4S

By | October 4, 2011, 12:09pm PDT

Summary: What’s new in the iPhone 4S?

So we have a name for Apple’s new iPhone, and it’s not a new integer.

Apple has unveiled its new iPhone - the iPhone 4S. Yes, that’s right, not the iPhone 5. Here’s everything you need to know about the iPhone 4S!

  • Two colors: Black and white
  • Three capacities: 16GB, 32GB and a new 64GB flavor
  • Three prices: 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and 64GB for $399
  • Pre-orders start October 7, shipping October 14
  • Weight up 3 g to 140 g!
  • Each handset is combined GSM and CDMA. Also, 14.4Mbps HSPA (up from the 7.2Mbps of the iPhone 4)
  • Dual-core A5 processor
  • Improved antenna
  • Updated 8 megapixel (3264×2448 resolution) rear camera (up from 5 megapixels on the iPhone 4) featuring improved light sensitivity and featuring 5 lens elements and 33% faster capture (faster than the HTC Sensation, Galaxy S and Droid Bionic)
  • Faster camera
  • Video recording up to 1080p (from 720p and 30fps) with image stabilization
  • Bluetooth 4.0
  • Talk-time battery life up to 8 hours (up from 7 hours for the iPhone 4) BUT standby time down to 200 hours (from 300 hours for the iPhone 4)
  • Siri voice control … seems cool but only time will tell how good this actually is
  • Siri supports - English (U.S., UK, and Australian), French, German
  • iPhone coming to the Sprint network
  • iPhone 4 down to $99
  • iPhone 3GS free

In other news …

  • iOS 5 out October 12 … free to all (iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch 3rd/4th gen) - Features list here
  • Revamped iPod nano (multitouch screen, new clock faces …), starting at $129
  • Updated iPod touch … added white … price starting at $199

Poll

iPhone 4S ... Hot or Not?

Also:

Poll

Best iPhone 4S feature:

Bottom line … unless the Siri voice feature really is a killer feature (and I’m not convinced it is), the iPhone 4S is aimed at those folks that either don’t have an iPhone or have an iPhone 3GS or earlier. This was, as I expected, a minor product update. A speed bump. The iPhone 4S is to the iPhone 4 what the iPad 2 was to the original iPad.

Poll

Do you like the name 'iPhone 4S'?

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Topics

Apple iPhone, Apple Inc., Smart Phones, Consumer Electronics, Personal Technology, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

Disclosure

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

All opinions expressed on Hardware 2.0 are those of Adrian Kingsley-Hughes. Every effort is made to ensure that the information posted is accurate. If you have any comments, queries or corrections, please contact Adrian via the email link here. Any possible conflicts of interest will be posted below. [Updated: February 23, 2010] - Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other actual/potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted so far on this blog.

Biography

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology -- whether that be by learning to program, building a PC from a pile of parts, or helping them get the most from their new MP3 player or digital camera.

Adrian has authored/co-authored technical books on a variety of topics, ranging from programming to building and maintaining PCs. His most recent books include "Build the Ultimate Custom PC", "Beginning Programming" and "The PC Doctor's Fix It Yourself Guide". He has also written training manuals that have been used by a number of Fortune 500 companies.

Adrian also runs a popular blog under the name The PC Doctor, where he covers a range of computer-related topics -- from security to repairing and upgrading.

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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
tonny2011 5th Oct
I think that there is one thing that apple has got right, to convince most of it users that it is the best so, they don't even bother to look for alternatives. I am a HTC Trophy, windows phone owner, i am in Congo, Africa. When i travel, in Africa, US, Europe,Asia i meet a lot of Iphone owners and they would be surprised to see that actually the WP 7 performs better many things they actually want to do on the phone. Especially keeping up with what matters the most for you. I got my mango update last week and i am very surprised to see all this hype about the Siri voice recognition, mango brought this update to WP7 users before the Iphone4s and suddenly, it becomes like an inovation. WP7 even recognizes my voice, you could only imagine my english accent. even in French the voice commends and voice to text work very well. How is this Siri an inovation? I am waiting for a Nokia device to get another WP for my second number. I like the new bing features on WP also. Apple will duplicate some of them also and create the hype to make them look like their inovation. This time, i feel like apple is not getting the hype it is used to, lets see how this turns out.
View in thread
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
tatiGmail 4th Oct
Yes, but it's in White. Kaching!
0 Votes
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Siri only for iPhone 4S?
toddybottom 4th Oct
I didn't see it spelled out that Siri was exclusive to the iPhone 4S. Was that specifically stated?

Hardware wise, the iPhone 4S is totally uninteresting to iPhone 4 owners like me. iOS 5 looks great though as does Siri since voice support in iOS 4 is really basic. I will be very disappointed if Siri is artificially disabled in iOS 5 to push sales of what is nothing but a tiny incremental update over the iPhone 4.
0 Votes
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Hardware wise, iPhone 4S significant change -- twice faster web browsing,
DeRSSS 4th Oct
@toddybottom: ... many times faster in CPU, way better still and video camera, better battery life, and it is universal -- you can change your carrier easily (AT&T to Verizon or vise versa).
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No, this is not a significant change
toddybottom 4th Oct
@DeRSSS
This is a change in specs with no real change to the consumer. Apple is playing the same old "CPU clock speed" game that Intel was playing throughout the 90s except that computers actually are used for processor intensive duties while iPhones are not. I will not be transcoding video on my iPhone any time soon. I know you are a big fan of vomitting specs like IPS and 7 times faster vector graphics but that's just garbage. It simply does not affect the consumer anywhere near as much as you claim. These specs are not what makes the iPhone so successful. They are bullet points on a spec spreadsheet. Nothing more.

More megapixels... I don't care, I always thought the camera was plenty good enough in the iPhone 4.

More CPU... I don't care, all the apps in the App store are built for the A4. They won't run noticeably faster on the iPhone 4S. Infinity Blade 2 to have better graphics? I don't care.

It has a maginally better battery life but the battery in my iPhone 4 already easily makes it through the day. This has zero effect on me.

Universal makes no difference to me either. I've been on the same carrier for years.

I know you are one of the biggest Apple fanbois on this site and that is cool but this is not a significant change. Your first hint should be that you are the ONLY one claiming it. Even lesser Apple fanbois aren't blind enough to agree with you.
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
tonymcs@... 4th Oct
@DeRSSS

WP7 already exists on a range of hardware and Mango phones will also offer not only a range of specs but also multiple carriers. Speech recognition is integrated and works and Mango is simply better than iOS or Android.

There are so many functions you just don't need an app for - they're built-in and if you are an app junkie then 30,000 should keep you busy for a while.

Put an iPhone down next to any Windows phone. Virtually all of them will be lighter and not as clunky. I swear people are told so much about Apple's "great" design that they're not realising their phones are heavy, chunky and look even worse due to the need for a case.

An what is this about a day battery life? My WP7 phone lasts for 3 days.
0 Votes
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Siri will be 4s only
use_what_works_4_U 4th Oct
@toddybottom
I don't claim to be an expert but I have been following the possibilities for a while now. Most of the technologists I have heard commenting on this feature say that the A4 chip in the iPhone4 is not capable of this level of voice recognition. The A5 chip (dual core) is required. To do it on the phone is more than the (single core) A4 processor can handle. The original voice recognition on the iPhone 3Gs sent the voice data to the cloud for processing. It worked remarkably well if you didn't have a distinct accent, but you also needed a *good* data connection (damn you ATT!) and some patience for the data to go to the cloud and come back in a machine-usable format.

My Android phone sends voice commands to Google for processing for this very reason (and when it doesn't it gets them wrong ~40% of the time) which is just one of the reasons that I don't use the feature all that much.

I think that the 4s will be required for this feature, but for technical restrictions rather than marketing restrictions.
0 Votes
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Except that Siri commands are also being sent to the cloud
toddybottom 4th Oct
@macadam
At least that is what I understood from the presentation.

The other reason I will call shenanigans on this is that I was just shown the Siri app running on my friend's iPhone 4.

I'm sure Apple will claim there are technical reasons for banning Siri from the iPhone 4 but it smells fishy to me.

From Engadget's live blog:
"There's now a microphone next to the space bar in the keyboard, and you can do dictaction. It's similar to Android, in that it's happening remotely...
In other words: data connection most certainly required."

I suppose it is possible that dictation happens remotely but Siri is on device.

Ultimately, we will find out on October 13th when jailbreakers enable Siri on the iPhone 4 and we'll see if it "sucks" or not.
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
use_what_works_4_U 4th Oct
@toddybottom
I missed that detail from the liveblog I was reading (I don't remember which one - busy day). I thank you for the new data point and concede that your opinion is quite valid.
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
thetwonkey 4th Oct
@toddybottom I hate all voice recognition software ever made. It all sucks, and none of it has ever worked for me in over 10 years. If you don't sound like Laurence Olivier or James Earl Jones, you might as well be speaking Esperanto.
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
Rama.NET 4th Oct
@thetwonkey
You will change your opinion if you use WP7.5 (Mango) Voice recognization feature. My accent is heavy and it still could understand correctly.
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
seolair 4th Oct
I was really disappointed they didn't talk about the iPhone 5. I guess stock holders were too since the stock price dropped 2%. Check out income infuser if you are trying to make money online.
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
LoverockDavidson_-24231404894599612871915491754222 4th Oct
The phone doesn't look all that interesting at all. Dual antennas, they now admit the signal quality was crappy so they had to put two antennas on it. No mention of if we are still holding it wrong.
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
Ben_E 4th Oct
I was generally quite pleased. iPhone 4S is to iPhone 4 as the 3GS was to the 3G, and iPad 2 to iPad. An incremental increase with some corrections to the design, some new features in the software and hardware etc.

I got my 3GS Febuary 2010 so I am more than content for this upgrade wink Will complement my iPad 2 nicely.
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
thetwonkey 4th Oct
@Ben_E i'm waiting for the iPad 3! Yeah, baby!
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
thetwonkey 4th Oct
Having just gotten an iPhone 4 in January, I'm not going to waste my time "upgrading" and paying the ETF. Lord knows, there will be an iPhone 5 somewhere down the line, and I always avoid being the "early adopter". Why shoot bugs for the vendor? January 2013 is soon enough for an upgrade for me.
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
Ben_E 4th Oct
Lots of posts disappearing off this blog - I read some of them (and posted one) and didn't see anything majorly contentious or inflammatory (no more so than posts above anyway) so why were they removed? Mine was in support of the 4S, being a 3GS owner myself. Was it removed because I wasn't fashionably bashing the new Apple product?
0 Votes
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RE: Apple introduces the iPhone 4S
tonny2011 5th Oct
I think that there is one thing that apple has got right, to convince most of it users that it is the best so, they don't even bother to look for alternatives. I am a HTC Trophy, windows phone owner, i am in Congo, Africa. When i travel, in Africa, US, Europe,Asia i meet a lot of Iphone owners and they would be surprised to see that actually the WP 7 performs better many things they actually want to do on the phone. Especially keeping up with what matters the most for you. I got my mango update last week and i am very surprised to see all this hype about the Siri voice recognition, mango brought this update to WP7 users before the Iphone4s and suddenly, it becomes like an inovation. WP7 even recognizes my voice, you could only imagine my english accent. even in French the voice commends and voice to text work very well. How is this Siri an inovation? I am waiting for a Nokia device to get another WP for my second number. I like the new bing features on WP also. Apple will duplicate some of them also and create the hype to make them look like their inovation. This time, i feel like apple is not getting the hype it is used to, lets see how this turns out.

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