Following the spate of rumors that preceded Apple's announcement of the new iPhone, now officially called the iPhone 4S, the reality did not live up to the promise. The new model looks almost identical to the iPhone 4, the important developments are all on the inside, and the iPhone remains one step behind in the wireless network technology.
First the basics, the iPhone 4S will be available in black and white, and comes in three memory sizes, 16GB ($199), 32GB ($299), and 64GB ($399). Of course if you lose your Verizon iPhone 4S the replacement will cost you $649 (16GB), $ 749 (32GB) and $849 (64GB). In the meantime, Apple cut the price of the iPhone 4 to $99 for an 8GB model.
The phones will ship on October 14 in the U.S. and Canada, and it will be available in over 70 countries total by the end of the year.
Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior VP of worldwide product marketing points out that the iPhone 4S will use the same A5 chip found in the iPad. The A5 is the Apple-designed, dual-core chip, which promises a major leap in performance. Despite the performance boost, Schiller went on to say that users can expect eight hours of talk time on 3G, 14 hours of talk time on 2G, six hours of cellular web browsing, nine hours of Wi-Fi, ten hours of video, or 40 hours of listening to music.
The big improvements came in the camera and voice control. The camera offers an eight megapixel sensor, with 3264x2448 resolution, and it takes pictures 33 percent faster than the iPhone 4. It also features a Hybrid IR filter for better color accuracy, which Schiller points out is usually a feature found on digital SLR cameras. The iPhone 4S's A5 chip includes an Apple-designed image signal processor that provides advanced face detection, with the ability to detect up to ten unique faces in a single photo, for automatic exposure.
The camera also offers 26 percent improved automatic white balance over the iPhone 4. Shiller also claimed the Droid Bionic needs 3.7 seconds to take its first photo, and the Galaxy SII HTC Sensation needs two seconds; the iPhone 4S can take its first picture in 1.1 seconds.
The iPhone 4S's camera also takes stunning high definition 1080p video, Schiller said. The phone's image signal processor offers real-time video image stabilization, along with temporal noise reduction to improve video quality in real time.
The voice control capability is called Siri, and is based on a voice-activated app that Apple acquired in 2010. Apple's vice president for iOS software, Scott Forstall, demonstrated its capabilities by asking the iPhone 4S "What is the weather like today?" The phone understood the meaning behind the words, and displaying a weather forecast. He then asked "What time is it in Paris," and the 4S displayed a live clock. He wrapped up by saying "Wake me up at 6 a.m." which set the alarm clock. Apple partnered with Yelp, so it can respond to commands like, "Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto."
Siri can also read messages from your Notification queue hands-free, and you can even tell Siri to check your calendar and schedule a meeting. You can also use Siri to initiate Web searches like: "Search Wikipedia for Neil Armstrong." Taking it to its limits, you can tell Siri to "Remind me to call my wife when I leave work;" it will know which contact is your wife, the GPS coordinates of your job, and set a location aware reminder in iOS 5's Reminders app.
Best of all, Siri supports transcription. Anytime the keyboard in iOS pops up, you can tap a microphone button, start talking, and the iPhone transcribes what you say.
The iPhone 4S includes both GSM and CDMA (i.e. a "World Phone") so there will no longer be a need for an AT&T model and a Verizon/Sprint model. It also includes a new wireless system, but it doesn’t do LTE or WiMAX. The new wireless trick allows the device to switch between two antennas to transmit and receive. That provides better call quality, and faster download speeds supporting up to 5.8Mbps upstream and 14.Mbps downstream. It seems from the start that iPhones had no interest in driving the leading the edge of cellular technology.
In summary, Apple wasn't planning to live up to the rumors but instead did an incremental brush up on the iPhone. A faster processor (with no hit in the battery life) and a better camera are nice, but the Siri voice control is really an Apple-type jump in functionality--this thing is like IBM's Watson in your pocket. Now we will have to reset the rumor generator for the next iPhone debut.
