Our hopes were high. Everyone was ready to bust down the doors of Apple and purchase a shiny new iPhone 5. We were chomping at the bit for information from the exclusive “Let’s Talk iPhone” event.
We settled for reading about what was happening at the event instead of watching it. Then, after talking about everything Apple but the iPhone, Phil Schiller announces, “I’m really pleased to tell you today about the brand new iPhone 4S.”
And everybody goes, “WHAT? 4S? Where’s our iPhone 5?”
There wasn’t one.
What Can the 4S Do?
The truth is the 4S can do everything we thought we were going to get with the iPhone 5, plus some.
The 4S comes with the new operating system, the iOS5, equipped with Apple’s iCloud, a service built off of the cloud computing principle. With iCloud, users no long have to worry about syncing all their Apple products with their latest finds in music or movies or worry about transferring information and documents between five different gadgets.
The 4S also features the A5 processing chip, which is twice as fast as the iPhone 4’s chip and has a dual-core graphics card that works seven times faster. The battery life of the 4S can sustain amazing feats of endurance, by running eight hours of talking on 3G coverage, 14 hours on 2G, six hours of web browsing with a 3G connection and nine on a WiFi connection, 10 hours of video and 40 hours of music. Will the next iPhone even need to be charged?
The new wireless system features better call quality, an upgrade that has been surprisingly a long time in the works for a phone — a gadget that’s supposed to make calls before anything else.
Apple also chose to ramp up the phone with the 4S, making it high enough quality to compete with some point-and-shoot cameras. The 8-megapixel camera can take pictures at a speedy rate of 1.1 seconds for one picture and a half-second for the second. Other phones can take almost six seconds to take two pictures by which point, the moment is probably gone.
And now for the “plus more”: Siri. Apple’s new feature, Siri, is basically a way for your iPhone to be even more convenient. Siri responds to your voice commands or questions and is able to tell you the weather, set alarms, tell you the time in Singapore, schedule appointments, check stock prices and tell you where to eat dinner. With technology like that, who even needs to think?
Cost? Release Date?
The 4S is available in black and white for preorder on October 7th, with a release date of October 14th. You can expect to pay $199 for the 16GB, $299 for the 32GB and $399 for the 64GB. That is, if you’re able to get over the disappointment of not having the iPhone 5.
The question is, will people be able to get over the disappointment? Can we overlook the fact that we didn’t get what we were expecting and accept that the 4S does everything we were expecting without that pesky little number five at the end?
Thanks to Will for submitting this guest article, one of our many external authors here on TechPatio.com.
It seems like iPhone 4S would be the best smartphone ever created. There are a lot of new features with this device just like face detection, editing picture, recording HD videos and Siri. Siri is really amazing. I’ve watched a video in YouTube on how it works and it blew me away. Siri is like your assistant – a real person. It can move your schedules and meetings, can find you a restaurant and can reply to your messages just by talking. Amazing, isn’t it?
I personally think iPhone 4s is a big disappointment. I really don’t know what Apple was thinking. Everyone was really talking about iPhone 5 and I even talked about buying one. Turns out, it is iPhone 4S. It does not mean anything, iPhone 4s is iPhone 4. What wants to wait over a year for the announcement of an enhanced iPhone 4? I’m not into this and will look forward to iPhone 5
Hi Alan,
I’m curious to know, what you had expected to find in an iPhone 5, that is not in iPhone 4S?
Well, I am expecting a complete new design of the entire phone. I’m not really looking for any specific feature because we all know that iPhone rocks. However, I am expecting iPhone 5/4s somehow would impress me with things that I did not expect / know. I’m seeing iPhone 4s is just an upgrade. But I do like the idea that this phone is for Steve. If it is so, it is a good launch then 🙂 – big fan of Steve Job
Oh but there are an Iphone 5, it just not from Apple.! 🙂
China launched their copy of the Iphone 5.
But I choose to see at as a tribute to Steve, that they called it Iphone 4s.
I’m little bit disappointed with iPhone 4S. I was expecting HD AMOLED screen and faster dual core processor.
Even my sister the Apple fan is not impressed with the 4S. It’s not enough of an upgrade for someone with a 4. If the rumors of the iPhone 5 having a larger screen are true, she might upgrade to that next year.
I have looking forward to iphone 5 so im a little disapointet. But the iphone 4s is a great smartphones whit many features
I was pretty disappointed when I heard, but after going over all the new features, I thought to myself, who cares if it isn’t a 5. I guess the biggest thing was anticipating a new redesign with a slightly larger screen. But other than that, the phone is awesome. I went to my verizon store to purchase one today and was told they were out until at least the 28th. I was bummed.
iPhone 4s just rocking the market now.
The iPhone 4S already broke the records in its first week-end. I think the iPhone 5 will be coming much later than February in these conditions