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Apple iPhone 4S.
Expected October 2011.
Almost identical in outward design to the original iPhone 4, the Apple iPhone 4S has
a better camera, faster processor, advanced speech recognition and a new version of the
iOS operating system for an improved user experience.
Although there are several major improvements, many potential customers will be disappointed
to learn that the iPhone 4S retains the very sharp but slightly small 3.5" 640 x 960 pixel
panel of its predecessor. High-end competing devices have larger screens, typically 3.7"
to 4.3" or so, but perhaps we will have to wait for the iPhone 5 if we want a bigger
display.
On the back is an 8 megapixel camera with a redesigned sensor to improve picture quality.
Although previous iPhones have always tended to be a little on the low side when it came
to the megapixel count, iPhones have always produced good quality pictures and this looks
set to continue. Camera phones can be very slow, but the iPhone 4S takes just 1.1 seconds
to take the first photo and 0.5 seconds between shots, which easily beats most of the competition.
The camera is also capable of 1080p HD video recording.
The operating system has been upgraded to iOS 5, which has several improvements. Home
screen notifications (a bit like the Metro interface on Windows Phone), the very interesting
location-based reminder system, tabbed browsing, instant synchronisation of photographs across
devices and very much improved mail. Improved iCloud integration is a key feature of the
new iPhone as well.
A novel feature of the new operating system is "Siri", a voice recognition system that
is designed to understand natural language, allowing for free-form commands and queries,
to which it draws on a variety of sources (such as Wolfram Alpha and Yell) to provide
information. Siri will work in English, French and German at launch, although you can be
sure that other languages will be supported in time. Although modern Android devices have
good speech recognition built-in, it looks like Apple have raised the stakes here in
the same way that they did with video calling and the original iPhone 4. We expect that
competitors will be working very hard to catch up.
One issue with the old iPhone 4 was the antenna design which could sometimes drop calls. The
iPhone 4S can now automatically switch between antennas to improve reception, and as a bonus
maximum download speeds on HSPA are now 14.4Mbps, in line with most of the competition.
The processor is an Apple-designed CPU called the "A5", based on the common ARM architecture
used in most mobile phones worldwide, with a dual-core CPU which is pretty common these
days in high-end handsets, except here Apple have also given it a dual-core graphics processor
which makes games run up to seven times quicker. Despite the faster processor, the battery
life has been improved - talktime is quoted as 8 hours on 3G, with 10 hours of video playback
or 40 hours of music.
There will be 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions of the iPhone 4S available, in the US these
will cost $199, $299 and $399 respectively when taken with a 2 year contract. Apple have
also adjusted the original iPhone 4 to make it cheaper, cutting the flash memory to 8GB
and the price tag to $99 with a new contract. You will still be able to get the iPhone 3GS,
which will now be free in the US with a contract.
One highly unusual feature is the inclusion of both CDMA and GSM standards in one phone.
For customers on CDMA networks in the US (Verizon Wireless for example, and now also the Sprint
network), they can use the phone worldwide with the addition of a GSM micro-SIM. It's
of less use to customers outside the US where CDMA is very rare, but we guess that it simplifies
manufacturing a lot.
Apple say that the iPhone 4S should be available in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France,
Germany and Japan from October 14th onwards, with most of the rest of Europe by the end
of the month, and by December it will be available on 100 carriers in 70 countries.