Well, it had to come; the Apple keynote produced information about a new iPhone. But as many people were expecting, it’s not going to be the iPhone 5 this year, and instead, we’ll see the iPhone 4S debut in October this year instead. Much rather like the gap between iPhone 3G and 3GS, Apple hasn’t made that many improvements to justify another iteration in what has been one of the most successful phones the world has seen to date. And also, by keeping the number to a ’4′, Apple can also show that very little has changed in the actual design of the phone, which is almost unchanged from it’s predecessor:
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But really, it’s under the bumper of the phone where most of the changes have been this year. This time the iPhone 4S sees these benefits:
Dual-Core A5 Chip: One of the main differences. The dual-core chip will see the phone being even more powerful than ever; together with on-board graphics improvements, Apple are reckoning there may be 8x the improvements; we’d rather say this is much overstated and not based on everyday scenarios. Either way the phone should run extremely smoothly even with intensive apps.
Siri: A new software development that Apple are marketing as a big part of the phone. Basically a virtual assistant which takes voice dictation to use multiple apps. Voice recognition is nothing new in mobile phone terms – going way back to the heady days of the Nokia 3310 we’ve seen voice-dialling. How this stacks up remains to be seen, but the product will have to be extremely slick to get market penetration.
8 Megapixel Camera: Huge resolution and means that Apple phones no longer lack in the camera department; with many other manufacturers been paused at the 8MP mark for the last year, this means this is broadly in-line with the best that the market has to offer.
iCloud: Rumoured as the disappearance of iTunes but that isn’t to be the case, instead, closer integration between other Apple devices such as the iPad and Macbook. Clearly, they’ve recognized the signs of the times, that people own more than one device which consumes the same media and this is a good concession towards all-out free sharing.
Pricing and Release: The phone is to be released in the UK on the 14 October with worldwide to follow. Obviously as a flagship phone this occupies the top bracket of pricing that the current iPhone 4 has which means price cuts for existing handsets: the iPhone 3GS has gone down to £319 Sim-Free (not a great price considering many better handsets are available) and the iPhone 4 goes to an interesting £420. Prices for the iPhone 4S start at £499 for the 16GB version, £599 for the 32GB version and a wallet-breaking £699 for the 64GB version.