Finally, Apple has announced the all new iPhone 4S model at an event held at its headquarters in Cupertino, USA. The new iPhone 4S looks almost like iPhone 4 but has faster processor, better camera and all new voice control feature called Siri. Apple plans to make the new iPhone 4S available in 70 countries by the end of December and unfortunately India did not make it to the list. So we presume that iPhone 4S will come in early January next year.
Apple will make the iPhone 4S available for pre-orders on October 7 and the smartphone will be available in stores of several countries from October 14 this year. Apple will offer iPhone 4S in Black and White colours where 16 GB version costs $199, 32 GB version costs $299 and 64 GB version for $399 — all with three year contracts. In the USA, three cellular providers — AT&T, Verizon and Sprint will be offering the iPhone 4S. Apple will offer iPhone 4S in Black as well as White colour.
The all new iPhone 4S has the same physical features as found in the iPhone 4. iPhone 4S comes with same 3.7 inch Retina Display that supports 960×640 screen Resolution support. The Retina display offers 800:1 contrast ratio and comes with oleophobic coating on front as well as back to prevent finger smudges.
However, the major improvements are found in the hardware used inside the chassis. The iPhone 4S will come with a dual-core Apple A5 Processor that will be coupled with dual-core PowerVR SGX540MP2 graphics chip. That means this iPhone 4S has two times more computer power and seven times faster than the iPhone 4.
Next major feature is the 8 Megapixel camera at the back that comes with a custom lens that offers f/2.4 aperture. Apple has added an improved backside illumination sensor along with improved auto white balance, advanced colour accuracy, face detection and reduced motion blur. The 8 megapixel image sensor is capable of recording 1080p HD video and can also be edited on the phone itself.
The front facing camera remains the same with VGA quality and capable of FaceTime video chat. The iPhone 4S supports AirPlay Mirroring to Apple TV at 720p HD video resolution while it can support full 1080p HD via Apple Digital AV adapter and Apple VGA adapters.
Oddly, Apple did not talk about the Bluetooth 4.0 presence in the iPhone 4S that brings high speed data transfer and low energy operations.
The new iPhone 4S will come pre-loaded with the iOS 5 and bunch of fresh native applications like Newsstand, Reminders and Cards. The Cards App is usable to create e-Greetings and sent out to loved ones. Apart from that, a new app Family and Friends will allow the users to locate the near and dear ones. Meanwhile, the Newsstand app will help collate, purchase and manage the newspaper as well as magazine subscriptions.
One novel feature of the iPhone 4S is the voice control and dictation feature dubbed as Siri, the intelligent assistant. Previously, the Siri app was available in the App Store but now the Siri website redirects to Siri page for iPhone 4S. Meant for the iPhone 4S only, the Siri assistant feature is currently in Beta and supports speech to text dictation with support for English, French and German at its launch.
The iPhone 4S will be a world phone thanks to the Dual-Mode chip that supports both GSM and CDMA networks. For the GSM networks, it supports up to 14.4 Mbps data speeds on 3G networks.
Apple will start rolling out the iOS 5 updates with the new iMessage, instant Messaging service across the iOS platform on the October 12. On the same day, the iCloud service that comes with 5 GB free virtual storage for storing contacts, documents, calendars, and Photos for iOS devices as well as Macs.
Several Apple loyalists and fans were bit disappointed with no word about the heavily rumoured iPhone 5 model.