As many expected, Apple has pulled the veil off of their latest iPhone creation, and it looks pretty similar to the iPhone 4. The reveal left many disappointed, as they were expecting a totally redesigned phone with a bigger screen, but there are just as many people seeing the 4S as a very substantial upgrade.
I compare this release of the 4S to the iPhone 3GS release, although not a totally new phone it greatly improves upon it's predecessor. Luckily, I jumped on the iPhone ship when the 3GS came out, so I am in the 'S' cycle... I look at it like this. The iPhone 4 came out and had some problems with the antenna and proximity sensor, etc... so now that my 2 year contract is up, I end up with a much faster version of the iPhone 4 with all of the bugs worked out.
Let's talk about the 4S in depth, shall we...
Physically, the iPhone 4S seems identical to the Verizon iPhone 4. No bigger screen, no elongated home button, same glass on the front and back and all buttons in the same place.
Internally, there are some vast differences:
- First, the antennas have been moved around and new antennas added to make sure there is not a repeat of 'AntennaGate.'
- Second, this is now a World phone, meaning there doesn't have to be 2 different versions for each carrier.
- Third thing is the A5 chip, which is also used in the iPad 2. This creates extremely higher processing power and should make the 4S noticeably faster than the 4 and insanely faster than my current 3GS.
- Also notable is the increase in storage space. Along with 16 and 32 gigs, Apple is offering the 4S in 64 gigs as well.
These changes may be enough to win over some, but the biggest features come about in the software upgrades included in iOS 5.
- Cards App... Ok, this may not be a huge deal for people, but it's kind of neat. This app allows you to create cards using your pictures or whatever design you wish, and for $2.99, Apple will print the card and mail it out for you.
- Find My Friends App... This is another nifty new app, let's say you and some friends go to an amusement park and decide to go separate ways to ride different rides. With this app enabled, you can see where your friends are at, making it easy to meet up. There are numerous other uses to this as well... use your imagination.
- iCloud... This service pretty much automatically uploads a lot of your data to Apple's 'cloud' and allows you to access it from any of your iOS devices. This should be nice in saving storage space.
- iTunes Match... While there is going to be 5GB of free storage, this is pretty much going to be a subscription service where you can store all of your music on Apple's 'cloud' and you will have access to all of your music at anytime (not sure if Apple will stream the music or if you need to download it.) This will be a nice feature, again, saving you a lot of storage space.
- Much More... There are supposedly over 200 other features in iOS 5, including a Reminders App, swipe gestures and more.
This sounds like a lot, but the icing on the cake is a new feature that is integrated into the entire iOS, and that new feature is 'Siri' a digital personal assistant.
To sum it up, Siri is a voice recognition & artificial intelligence program that understands normal conversational questions and quickly provides you with answers. It also can act as a personal assistant, going as far as checking your calendar, scheduling events, setting reminders, etc, etc...
I could speak about Siri for days, so I will leave you for now and create a separate post all about the Siri Assistant.
In closing... The iPhone 4S will be available to pre-order this Friday, October 7th and will be released the following Friday, October 14th. I am staying awake (or waking up early) on Friday morning at 3:01 a.m. to make sure I get my pre-order in.
Next week can't come soon enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment