Tech review: Apple’s iPhone 4S

It wasn't just the latest iPhone that drew people to Apple stores. Many consumers waited in queues for hours - sometimes enduring chilly temperatures and overnight thunderstorms - to remember Steve Jobs, Apple's visionary who died last week. The company's first iPhone release since Jobs' death turned into another tribute. Some customers even joked that the new model 4S stood “for Steve.” Just like any other Apple product, there were numerous rumours about how would the product turn out to be.

Although many reports suggested that it will be just a hardware update with the same design while a few reports were indicating a totally revamped phone design and that it will be called as iPhone 5. When it was officially unveiled on October 4, it turned out to be the iPhone 4S, a successor to last year's iPhone 4.

At the first glance everyone was disappointed as they expected an iPhone 5. But although iPhone 4S has exactly the same case as iPhone 4, the internals were totally new. Some of the biggest features of the device are:

Dual-core processor
(Apple A5 chip)
8 megapixel camera with 1080p video
iOS 5 software
iCloud
Siri AI assistant

Although the specification looks quite ordinary on paper specially when compared to other smartphones in the market, the iPhone 4S still ranks top in stability, security, usability and customer satisfaction.

The camera is the best camera ever built on a phone. In fact quality wise it is said to replace mid/higher range digital compact cameras.

The most popular and the amazing feature is the Siri assistant. You can talk to it in a natural language and it will interpret and reply to you. It can read/send a message, it can set a reminder, it can search for any information you want to get and can also be used to dictate text. Although this kind of system was already there in the market, Siri seems to be a true Artificial Intelligence as other systems just fail to recognize even the simplest words.

People just couldn't resist but buying the device and thus it breaks all previous single day sales records in the US, thanks to Siri and the awesome camera. In India, iPhone 4S is expected to be launched in December.

The bottom line is that if you are an existing iPhone4 owner, buying a 4S makes little sense but it is great choice for the owners of older iPhones or the first time buyers.

Viraj Chaudhari
M.Sc. (IT), VSIT