Unlike the launch of of the iPhone 4, the 4S barely excite the crowd despite its self proclamation as the most amazing phone in the world. So disappointed is the world that Apple's stock took a 5% dip. To be fair to Apple though, these disappointment really comes from an overtly high expectation. Any other manufacturers which release such update would be met with greater cheers.
So what is new with the 4S? It is still housed in the same beautiful exterior and its still excellent Retina display wasn't upgraded in any way. This design, when released last year blew everyone away. It didn't looked as much like a phone as it does as a communication device form the future. I got to admit that I was more curious how Apple will better the exterior design more than what they have to offer on the inside.
The camera itself was upgraded to 8MP and 1080p Full HD video recording. Samples photo from 4S was released by Apple and they look amazing. They are professionally taken of course but I believe in any hands, it would still produces photos comparable to those of the Galaxy S2. It's still a little nosier but it isn't too prominent.
A more subtle but important changes would be the antenna. The original design of an outside antenna wrapping the side of the phone sound like genius but when held with the left hand, disrupt signal to the point of dropped call. Only one of my iPhones totting friends has such complaint though, even if she choose to blame it on Digi instead. It remain to be seen how this slight modification would improve the signal.
On the inside the phone is running iOS 5 on a A5 dual core chip. Yup, the iPhone got dual core now albeit still capped at 1GHz compared to dual core 1.2GHz of the Galaxy S2 or HTC Sensation. I remember however that Google themselves admitted that Gingerbread wasn't yet optimized for a dual core processor. Optimized or not, these Android monsters are already blazing fast in their performance. If the iOS are better at taking advantage of the dual core chip, it could potentially be, though I suspect, not perceptively faster than its competitors.
As for the iOS 5 which was introduced much earlier, it supposedly brings 2 noticeable addition. The notification area and possibly homescreen, both which are long available to Android devices. The iCloud integration shows potential though. This service let you store files in Apple server so it may be easily shared. For example, you take a photo and it shows up immediately on your PC for you to work on. The next generation of Window Phone devices will come with 25GB of free cloud storage but it is not clear yet what iCloud would offer.
The highlight of the 4S however is the integrated Siri Assistant, previously available as a free app for iPhone 4. It is basically a voice command app but with a bit of a human touch as it's smart enough to understand normal speech instead of instruction specific command. It's like having a personal assistant by your side as it answer your question, managed your schedule, take note and make contact for you. There are many a phone with voice command function but Siri took it to a new level of smart. As one of the key selling point for the iPhone 4S, the original siri in the App Store has been hastily removed. Too bad.
Now, that wasn't so bad was it? The phone has gone dual core with its camera upgraded in addition to the iCloud service and Siri integration. what more can we ask for? I am tempted to believe the disappointment really stems for the fact that it didn't get a brand new look. Unfortunately, that alone may be enough to convince most people to just stick to their 'old' iPhone 4 because there may be a new iPhone out there now but the previous model is still pretty good.
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