This phone has recieved a mix of opinions from critics, According to some, they were waiting for 'iPhone 5' and they got a '4S' instead. Weird I must say, Either they just wanted a good enough excuse to not buy the iPhone or they have mixed feelings about it, either way, pretty stupid.
Seriously, On what basis were these people hoping for an 'all new radical design' I simply cannot understand.
Trend with apple has always been to maintain a design for atleast 2-3 device cycles.
The iPhone 4S of course borrows it's design from it's ancestor, the iPhone 4, and as I anticipated, there's an improved antenna system, The same alumino-silicate glasses now house a completely new surge of power underneath.
What's New in Hardware-
1) A bit late, but Apple is finally in the line of dual core smartphones.
The CPU and Graphics division have revamped their power with the 1 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and a PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU(all this rubbish is short for a dual core graphics processing unit), in combination, they are called the Apple A5 chip.
2)There's unmentioned increase in the memory and cache of the CPU.(probably RAM is now 1024 MB)
-Update: There's no increase in RAM, it's still 512 MB.
3)Camera- The camera in iPhone 4S is something marvellous. There's now a 5 element lens(more elements mean better picture in simple terms) compared to the 4 Element lens featured previously.
There's a new hybrid IR filter to filter out the image spoiling Infrared rays. The number of pixels is increased to 8 Megapixels, what we need to really watch out here for is, more megapixels not always mean a better picture, Photography is about capturing photons, and that is the most difficult task in a phone camera, as the lens is too small. They have made some really impressive gestures to make an improvement on that, By increasing the lens aperture to f/2.4(which simply means there will be more exposure now) and by creating larger size of pixels. There's better Auto White Balance and uniformity of colors with the new A5 chip.
With iOS 5, we also have AE/AF(Auto Exposure and Auto Focus) Lock and Grid available.
Video is now full 1920x1080p HD, and there's video stabilization using Gyroscope(A sensor to measure 3 Axis motion - 1 of them being - around th gravity) to measure movements.
4)Siri- Yes it's here.! The most talked about feature of the iPhone 4S. Voice recognition at it's best.
It's one of the most natural forms of communication and now the phone will be able to talk to you just like a person, with all the sense of context, meaning, depth and natural language.
It just works, just hold the home screen button, and unlike the previous blue screen of Voice Control, A microphone with purple hue/glow appears, tap on it and speak, and Siri will do it for you.
Siri was a personal assistant application purchased by Apple recently, and is still in Beta.
It's 4S exclusive.
Update: I wrote this post a while back(in October) but forgot to post it. Siri has been ported unofficially to older devices and it works perfectly fine, Except the 'Raise To Speak' functionality, which lets user to activate Siri just by holding the phone near their ear and speak, this hasn't been working in the ports, probably due to the inclusion of a new type of gyroscope in the iPhone 4S.
There's slight improvement in the LCD in terms of brightness, although, it's a year old technology now, It's still one of the best displays in the market.
Improvements in Performance-
The processing of iPhone 4S is twice as fast as the iPhone 4 and has a massive graphics improvement(up to 7x faster). The graphics performance is almost 9x of the previous generation.
The new processor enhances camera performance as well, you can now capture the 1st image in less than 1.1 seconds(2nd Picture is even less, 0.5 secs. The new Image Signal Processor on the A5 enables face detection, real-time video stabilization and better auto white balance on the camera(unto 20%).
Epic Games showcased the power of the iPhone 4S by showcasing the upcoming version of their wildly popular and highly praised game Infinity Blade.
When I used the phone, it felt better in every way. Loved the performance.
Improvements in network reception-
The iPhone 4S has dual antennas which can switch in real-time to make call drops a thing of past as the phone switches to a different antenna as one gets attenuated. The phone now employes both CDMA and GSM radios, making it a World Phone.
The iPhone 4S is here and now the question is, Is it better than then all previous generation iPhones?
Of course it is, on the contrary I feel this is the phone which is now going to last for at least 3-4 generation of iPhone in terms of support(Like the iPhone 3GS), So buying it is a really good investment. Unless you're a person who's completely tied with apple with a disk-load of purchased Apps and long time Apple fan, you can always look at other options which in terms of hardware might offer you much more.
But there's no denying, the charm of Apple, is never lost.
Although If you're expecting a large screen (or if you were), It's not going to happen, as for a phone, the screen is best possible in terms of 'finger-reach'.
To the iPhone 4 owners,
It's not obligatory for you to upgrade unless you're charmed by Siri, but believe me, it's not that great, and not worth shelling out a $1000 dollars...(Unless of course you're a rich enough fan boy)
The accent recognition is very limited, and it's messed up if you're not in the Americas.
If you want a better camera and more processing power, than it's an upgrade for you, and a very good one, Don't wait for an 'iPhone 5' as most probably this is the 2nd phone after 3GS which will be a given a very long term support due to it's hardware which will be long lasting.
Though the iPhone 4 is still an amazing phone compared to others phones in the market.
Conclusion- This phone is Apple's answer to all the dual core beasty-phones out there. People are happy to know that Apple is now at par in providing functionalities that it did not previously, although like Apple says it, It takes time to put things just right.
Thumbs up, iPhone 4S.
