If you have a sliver of a technical bone in your body you know that Apple announced its next iPhone today. It wasn’t the eagerly awaited iPhone 5, Apple called its next version the iPhone 4S. Apple customers and non-customers have been waiting for this phone for a long time. Apple didn’t do the traditional 1 year apart models and announced this phone in June but in October. Personally, the 6 month delay for what we are getting wasn’t worth the wait. The biggest announcement I took away that the iPhone is will be available on Sprint. The rest of the features are cool, but are they worth dropping a few hundred bucks to upgrade from my iPhone 4?
The most amazing announcement and the one aspect that would tip me to get the 4S is Siri. Siri is the personal Assistant for your phone. A fully speech recognition and command system. It really makes your device hands free for all your phones functionality. From the reports from the Apple event Siri is the most accurate recognition system people have seen. For Siri to be successful it has to be, but since Apple released it, I don’t doubt it’s not polished and ready to go. Very possible why the phone took so long to come out.
Although Siri is amazingly cool, I don’t think it’s worth the iPhone 4 to 4S upgrade. Let’s check out the other new features.
The next big functional improvement is the camera. An 8 megapixel sensor, a new lens and several camera features and processing changes the phone now can replace your point and shoot camera. Is this enough of a reason to upgrade? You can get a very good point and shoot that will surpass the 4S camera for less than $100 now. I would put this functional improvement at the top of the list, for me, to upgrade. Mainly because as I am a photographer and have been expanding my iphoneography use, it’s always good to get a better camera in my hands.
Lastly the big upgrade is the internal works. The iPhone 4S now has two processors, the same as the iPad, and a memory bump. This will increase the smoothness and speed of applications. They claim that the 4S can maintain battery life, but with a charger pretty much everywhere I go I just need it to last 4 hours with heavy all around use most of the time. The rest I am less than an hour from a quick charge. I have come accustomed to charging my many devices anyway.
So the three big changes coming with the iPhone 4S is very tempting, I am not seeing the Wow Factor to make me run out and get two. I am more happy with my upgrade to the iPad 2 from the first gen. The house hold has had our iPhone 4 phones and we are happy with them. I am actually more excited for iOS 5 to come out on the 12th than I am about the 4S. Disappointed is a good word to describe my feelings when I saw the news.
It’s Apple so I am sure they will sell a billion the first day. At this time, unless they can get the Wow Factor on each model, I may slip into an every other model purchaser. When the iPhone 5 does come out, then I will be first in line. Like anything each consumer will make the decision for themselves and if they have the cash to spend, why not?
Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.
