I know, you guys know it already but then as the tradition is, we ought to do a launch story for the newest iPhone kid on the block – the iPhone 4S. Announced earlier today at the “Town Hall” (the same place where they introduced the first generation iPod back in 2000) at Apple’s Cupertino Campus, I like most of you was catching up with the events unfolding live using Twitter streams and popular tech blogs.
Anyway, the iPhone 4S is here now and like many of us expected, the 4S is NOT the low end iPhone model that would act as a sidekick for the iPhone 5 which was thought to be announced today. In fact, the now previous generation iPhone 4 would be continued to be sold as a lower priced alternative to the iPhone 4S in markets across the globe.
So, what’s new? Well if you look at it externally, it’s the same phone. Nothing has changed. The design, the display size and even the screen resolution remain the same. The major upheaval though has happened within the confines of that sleek, thin aluminum shell. Within the same confines, Apple has managed to put a processor that is twice as fast as the old, laggard A4 chip. You are familiar with this one though. It goes by the name of the A5 and can be seen doing duty on the iPad 2. The graphics chip is seven times more powerful than the older one. All this makes the iPhone 4 which had cutting edge hardware at the time of its launch look stupid, right?
The iPhone 4S also gets an improved 8 megapixel camera that also boasts of a new image sensor that lets you take amazing photographs. We wonder if this one can match up to the current king of the camera phones segment – the Nokia N8. The 4S does beat the N8 on the video recording front though. Your iPhone is now capable of shooting 1080p videos!
Anyway, it would be very interesting to see how the 4S fares against the Samsung Galaxy S II– the orgasm generator phone for Android fanboys. Apple also says that they have redesigned the antenna (indirectly telling us that no antennagate will happen this year).
Also to be noted is the fact that there would be no version of the phone, at least in the next few months that would support LTE networks. The 3G network support has however been enhanced and the iPhone 4S now supports faster downloads of up to 14.4 Mbps thanks to support for HSDPA 4G. That said, let us not forget that most domestic carriers in the US do not support HSDPA 4G.
Along with the iPhone 4s, Apple also took covers of iOS 5 which we can talk at length in a different post. But I might as well add that Apple added as many as 200 new features to iOS 5 –including that very interesting cards App that lets you send physical postcards to an address in the U.S from any part of the globe.
Perhaps the most important feature addition on the iPhone 4S was that of Siri, the enhanced Voice Control feature that the phone gets. Like we had said earlier, this assistant feature is a highly evolved version of the barebones Voice Command app and in its current form, it can understand abstract queries. Siri lets you carry out virtually everything your phone can – but without using your hands and just by talking to it. From what we have heard so far, initial impressions seem to be good. Now only if Siri did well with us Indians and our accent.
The wait for the iPhone 4s will end on October 14, 2011 when you would be able to buy it in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, Germany and Japan. It will land in 22 more countries starting October 28. Here’s the price list for the new Jesus Phone:
The iPhone 4S costs $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model, and $399 for the 64GB model.
The question now is; Are you getting one?