A man’s worst nightmare after a break up is a chick that looks exactly like your ex. You’re having second thoughts, it's too early perhaps to end it, and maybe you should give it one more chance.
You two did look great together, your iPhone 4 and you, I mean. In fact you still do. Should you go next? 4s, I mean? Well, let’s see about that.
Apple iPhone 4S was launched in October. As always, expectations were very high, rumors about this phone’s features started many months before. 4S is not a revolutionary phone, comes rather as an improvement to iPhone 4 . Perhaps this is why many aficionados said they were disappointed when they saw the phone, expecting perhaps a completely new iPhone 5 . The iPhone 4S is the half-point type. There probably is nothing special about it. At least, not on the outside.
You can see it for yourself, first hand if you decide to buy one here on a monthly deal.
Many of the features of iPhone 4 were improved. The processor is faster, Internet through HSPA is also faster, and it features a better camera, including HD 1080p video recording capability. Siri, the iPhone 4S digital assistance, presents a very interesting technology, even if there is premature to say it will permanently change the way we use the phone. Apple phones have been criticized many times they are behind the competition in terms of hardware, but iPhone 4S is now almost as well equipped as the latest Android smartphones.
Appearance
Apple's new phone comes in a small box, which contains only strictly necessary accessories. Apple put inside the charger, USB cable and a hands free headset. The box also contains a device that helps you remove the SIM card and the user manual. Apple makes lots of money from the sale of apps and accessories, so if you want a protective cover or other cables, you must pay separately paisan, no freebies here.
iPhone 4S looks identical to iPhone 4. The exterior does not betray any difference, which was surprising to many who expected a radical new design. Dimensions are still extremely small, the phone has a length of 115.2 mm, a width of 58.6 mm and a thickness of only 9.3 mm. It is definitely one of the thinnest smartphones. At a weight of 140 grams is not exactly light as a feather, but it’s nothing out of ordinary either. The phone feels great in hand, is solid and the materials used are of high quality. Apple, as always, doesn’t disappoint in this regard.
The front of the phone shows off the 3.5 inch display, a single button below the screen, the speaker above the screen, a secondary camera and proximity and ambient light sensors.
The right side houses the SIM card only. To open the slot you have a dedicated tool that comes in the box, but you can also use a paperclip. Or a hammer.
The left side has volume buttons and a mute button. These buttons are one of the few design changes to the iPhone 4, they were moved a few millimeters from the old position. The button that increases the volume is also used when shooting pictures.
Top includes a headphone jack and the power button to turn off the screen. While not very visible, here is a second microphone, which eliminates ambient noise in calls.
On the back we can find only the 8 megapixel camera, with LED flash. Battery is non-removable and you don’t have a Micro SD slot, ergo you don’t have access to the phone’s back cover.
At 1430 mAh, the battery has a generous capacity. According to the manufacturer, it holds up to 200 hours of standby or up to 14 hours in 2G talk time and 8 hours of talk time on 3G newtorks. In reality it depends very much on how you use the phone, in the hands of a hardcore user battery will last for one day, with a moderate use, maybe you get 2 days.
Internet and GPS consumes the most battery life, playing music is more conservative with the battery (if you keep the screen closed).
Use
iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5, the newest version of Apple's operating system. iOS 5 brings more news from IOS 4, making the phone more user friendly. Siri Virtual Assistant is probably the most interesting. Siri is a new way to interact with the phone. Instead of searching through the applications, you say what you want, and Siri helps. For example, you can dictate to your phone to add a date in the calendar, to call a contact or send a message. Voice recognition works quite well, although it is still in beta.
Another important novelty is the notification menu. Since Apple introduced the possibility for applications to run in the background on IOS, there always was an issue that notifications appeared above the current application and interrupted what you were doing. Apple was inspired here by the way notifications work on Android, they now appear in the top bar, without having to interrupt your current application.
Another important thing is that iOS 5 can update the phone directly over the Internet. Upgrades are thus much faster and more convenient.
The 4S's screen is 3.5 inches and offers a resolution of 640 x 960 pixels. It is called Retina Display, with one of the largest resolution available on a mobile phonethe. The honest truth is few can match the Retina for its crisp graphics, vibrant colors, deep blacks and remarkable sunlight legibility and viewing angles. . We must admit this is one of the strong points of the phone, the high resolution makes any image, video or text a delight to see. The screen is scratch resistant.
As I previously said, in the hardware department we have a major improvement over Iphone 4. We now have a dual core processor of 1 GHz, making all applications to move faster. There is a dedicated video processor too, which is excellent for any application that uses the video resources intensely and makes them run smoothly. RAM is 512 MB.
Basic functions
iPhone 4s telephony department works great, unlike its predecessor. Importantly, the GSM signal reception problems were solved. This was one of the biggest problems of the iPhone 4. Fortunately, Apple’s problems have been forgotten or ignored by fans everywhere; else the phone would have had very low sales. 4S now uses two antennas instead of one, so that even you’re accidentally touching an antenna, the other takes over immediately, reception is assured.
A nice touch of the iPhone 4S is noise reduction, made possible by a second microphone. With this function, you may speak in a crowded, noisy place with no problems at all.
iPhone 4S uses the same simple main menu that shows all available applications. User interface is extremely intuitive, which is also one of the proven qualities of IOS.
Agenda lets you add any contacts you want, and now you can associate a phone book contact to a profile on a social network such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.
Messaging is another strong point of this phone. Obviously 4S supports both SMS and MMS, and email. iMessage is probably one of the most interesting features, which allow you to send free text messages to your friends who also have an iPhone. iMessage is actually an instant messaging application, but what makes it so successful is the integration with regular SMS application. When you’re writing a new text message, the application checks if the receiver also has an iPhone and if so, it sends the SMS through the Internet instead, so you do not have to pay for the SMS. Everything happens automatically of course, the SMS application gives you a hint though, if the Send button is green it means that you are sending a regular SMS and blue means that you are sending an iMessage.
The email client is also very good. You may set up multiple accounts POP3/IMAP and organize your messages in many ways.
Multimedia
4S does not support micro SD cards and that's sad, but comes with more internal memory than its predecessor, so you have enough room to keep your multimedia files. When you buy the phone, you can opt for one of the versions of 16, 32 or 64 GB.
The gallery is, as usual, excellent. Photographs can be seen on the screen on high resolution, the transition from one picture to another and is quick, also zooming is lightning fast and the phone has included a photo editor that helps you edit photos.
The music player is also excellent, as we expect from the company that invented the iPod. You can organize your music into categories, you benefit from a graphic equalizer that helps you change your sound at will and you can buy music from iTunes directly from the phone. Music playback quality is very good, as I expected. Headphones in the package are pretty good, no need for an upgrade here.
Breaking news, iPhone 4S has FM radio, at last. That's a relief. (nope, just kidding, too high tech)
The video player plays 1080p but suffers from poor codec support. Videos look pretty good on the high resolution screen of the phone, including HD 1080p clips, running smoothly. Unfortunately it lacks support for DivX or Xvid.
The camera is one of the biggest improvements over the iPhone 4. The 8 megapixel sensor changed picture quality radically; pictures are now extremely vivid in terms of contrast, the level of detail and colors. LED flash helps in low light photography. It is definitely one of the best 8 megapixel camera on a mobile phone, you can kiss your old dedicated camera good bye.
Video recording is another strong feature of the phone. iPhone 4s records at 1080p resolution with 30 fps, which means Full HD movies with excellent quality. Videos are saved in MOV format and will take a lot of space due to very high resolution, but then you can compress them with the video editor included in the software bundle. 4S 's camera excels in terms of image stabilization, so if you’re shaking your hand when shooting, phone compensates and creates a stable image.
Connectivity
No complaints here, as usual. You can connect to high speed internet Wi-Fi b / g / n, and by up to 14.4 Mbps HSPA download is 5.76 Mbps upload.
The web browser is an upgraded version of Safari. It is very fast, it loads web pages correctly, which make browsing a pleasure. I liked the Reader function, which extracts only the useful content of Web pages, for example an article and associated photos, displaying only this useful content full screen, somewhat like pages of a book. You get rid of advertising and stuff that is irrelevant for you and also eats up memory. Reader mode is activated by pressing a button on any page in which the browser detects compatible content.
The phone has Bluetooth 4.0; you can use it to connect hands free or other accessories. Unfortunately, Bluetooth file transfer is not possible, at least not without a separate application. Sucky.
iPhone connects to the computer using the USB cable supplied in the package. The phone uses a proprietary port, but the USB cable provided helps you connect it to any computer.
Applications
Applications are an important part of any iPhone aficionado, one of the reasons we buy one. Besides the many applications preinstalled, you can download thousands of free and paid applications from the App Store.
Organizer functions of the iPhone 4S are excellent. Its calendar can be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar. "Reminders" is the new application that allows you to add reminders to alert you at a certain time/location that you have something to do. Simple, but useful, this application Reminders lets you associate a reminder with a location. For example, you can configure your phone to notify you when you get to a certain location that you have something to do, like kissing the secretary at the office, you get the idea.
Because almost all of us are watching YouTube on the go, the iPhone comes with an application for it.
We already know the iBooks, the application that lets buy and read eBooks on iPhone. It is preinstalled and looks great, including a free book.
4s comes with GPS and the application preinstalled for navigation is Google Maps. In App Store you may find a lot of applications for GPS navigation, so you can use your GPS device instead of the cars.
Conclusion:
Apple's iPhone 4S is undoubtedly one of the most desired phones of the moment. For true believers, getting the latest Apple tech is not just an upgrade, they get elevated to a new level of well-being and fulfillment. 4s is blazing fast, thanks to the new dual core chip and the graphics chip. It will serve you right for a long time from now, the camera is one of the best in the industry, both in terms of pictures or HD recording. With IOS5, you’re making a difference, with iCloud, iMessage, Siri, OTA updates and all the goodies from the brilliant appstore, not forgetting the looks of the original iPhone 4.
For millions of people though it will be between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. Tough one we know. But hey, there's an app for that:
USER: Do you know a better phone than an iPhone 4S?
SIRI: Wait… there are other phones?
Key features
• iOS 5 with iCloud integration
• Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support with 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• Dual-band CDMA and CDMA2000 1xEV-DO support
• 3.5" 16M-color LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen of 640 x 960 px resolution
• Scratch-resistant glass front and rear, with fingerprint-resistant coating
• 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex A9 CPU, PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, Apple A5 SoC
• 512MB of RAM
• Voice recognition, Siri virtual assistant
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and touch focus
• 1080p video recording at 30fps
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, Wi-Fi hotpsot
• GPS with A-GPS connectivity; digital compass
• 16/32/64GB storage options
• Accelerometer, proximity sensor and a three-axis gyro sensor
• Active noise cancellation with a dedicated secondary microphone
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack, stereo Bluetooth v4.0
• Excellent audio quality
• Slim waistline at only 9.3mm
• Secondary front-facing VGA camera
• Built-in Picture and Video editors
• Rich AppStore
• New antenna design and improved signal reception in poor signal areas
Main disadvantages
• MicroSIM card support only
• No Flash support in the web browser
• No true multitasking for all applications
• FaceTime video calls work only over Wi-Fi
• No file transfer over Bluetooth or USB Mass Storage mode (independent from iTunes)
• No FM radio
• No stereo speakers
• No microSD card slot
• Non-user-replaceable battery
• Siri still a beta, location services not enabled outside US
• Stuck with iTunes for loading content
