iPhone 4S preview

Tuesday, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, the next iteration of the iPhone. Now many people were expecting the iPhone 5, but that’s not quite what Apple had in mind. If you remember, Apple released the 3GS a year after the 3G. It looked exactly the same as the 3G, but had better hardware inside. A year later, they introduced the iPhone 4, with a brand new look. This time, Apple is doing it again with the 4S. Leading up to the keynote, there were probably 12,000 different  rumors about what the new iPhone would be. Everything from a brand new design (along with the title iPhone 5), to a 4″ screen, to a teardrop design made of complete metal to two models being released. Unfortunately for some, none of these rumors were true. The only shred of evidence came from a beta of iTunes 10.5 that revealed images of the “iPhone 4S”. So what is the iPhone 4S, and what does it offer over the regular 4?

The 3GS looked exactly the same, but it offered a much better CPU, double the RAM (256MB), a better GPU, actual GPS, and a 3.2MP camera. With the 4, it offered a new design, a much, much better CPU, 512MB of RAM, a better GPU, 5MP camera, and an antenna that can cause problems if you hold it incorrectly. Given that the iPhone has been released every year since 2007, the time that has passed since the iPhone 4 has been about 16 months now, so people expected a much better phone given the time it’s taken to release it. Since this is the “speed” update, what’s inside? Let’s go over the differences, that we know about: A dual core A5-based CPU (same as the iPad 2), a dual core SGX 543MP2 GPU (again, same as the iPad 2), an 8MP camera with a 2.4/f aperture, 1080P video recording and video stabilization, a little better battery life, a better designed antenna, HPSA+ 14.4Mbps, Bluetooth 4.0, Siri the voice assistant, and it being a world phone (meaning the chipset supports GSM and CDMA together). So as an owner of an iPhone 4, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? If you’ve used a 3G and upgraded to the 3GS, then yes it is worth it. The amount of upgrades included are pretty significant if you ask me. Being a current owner of the iPad 2, I can attest to the performance of it. Seeing as how the iPad 2 is a 9.7″ 1024×768 screen, both the CPU and GPU will simply scream on this device.

Probably one of the most exciting changes with the 4S is Siri (pronounced Sear-y), the voice assistant. With the 3GS, they introduced “Voice Control”, which allowed you to control certain aspects of the phone by holding the home button for three seconds and speaking a command. I honestly tried it a bit, but honestly never used it completely. Sure it’s good if you want to change a song or make a quick call, but overall it was extremely limited and didn’t really offer much. Well, in comes Siri. Siri is a technology created by Nuance, which Apple bought in 2010. They had an app on the AppStore (but has since been pulled and existing users have until the 13th to keep using it), and now it’s officially part of the 4S. What Siri offers is a vocal, digital assistant for you to use. So you can ask Siri to make an appointment for you, or remind you to buy a gift for someone, or hell, read back your text messages (and even respond to them!). The amount you can do with Siri is simply amazing. If you don’t believe me, watch the video below and see the amazing things you can do with it:

See what I mean? Being able to have an actual conversation with your phone, is pretty incredible. Not to say that this isn’t creepy at all, or that we should have conversations with our phone, but at least you can do way, way more than you could with Voice Control. Since Siri is only available on the 4S, some have said that it requires 1GB of RAM to work correctly. We don’t honestly know the actual speed of the CPU or how much RAM is actually available, but I believe that it’ll have 1GB of RAM, with the CPU clocked at 1Ghz, or 1.2Ghz. We won’t honestly know until iFixit gets ahold of it next Friday. Next Friday is when it’ll be available, with iOS 5 being available on the 13th. Once the 4S is out, I’ll be sure to put out a review and let you know how everything is. Until then, we’ll have to wait to speculate on how good it is! Oh, and pre-orders are available starting tomorrow at 12:01am PDT.