[Partial]

I'm really disappointed. It's bulky by today's standards. It's bulky with a tiny screen. That's a horrible combination. Certainly not bleeding edge or pushing technology forward. The design of the device leaves a lot to be desired. Lame.

[Robo]

The 8GB iPhone 3GS is now free on contract.

The iPhone 4 now comes as an 8GB model for $99. For the first time, this $99 iPhone is available in two colors, black and white.

The new iPhone, the iPhone 4S, comes for the first time in three sizes: 16GB for $199, 32GB for $299, and a new 64GB model for $399. It works on both CDMA and GSM networks, and in the US it will be available on Sprint in addition to AT&T and Verizon. It comes in both black and white, and they didn't cheapify it by making the back plastic: it's the new high-end iPhone in all respects.

The marquee new features include Siri, which is an almost eerily intelligent voice-controlled assistant; the new A5 SoC, which promises up to twice faster CPU performance and up to seven times faster graphics than before; and the new 8MP camera, which is crazy fast, captures 1080p video, and fits inside the case with no bulge or wedge-shaped design required. The iPhone 4S also takes advantage of faster 14.4 Mbps HSPA+ networking where available; by AT&T's (and T-Mobile's) standard it is now a 4G phone.

[Kraetos]

Partial dissaponted with new Apple product because of specs and numbers, news at 11.

[Robo]

Originally Posted by Partial I'm really disappointed. It's bulky by today's standards. It's bulky with a tiny screen. That's a horrible combination. Certainly not bleeding edge or pushing technology forward. The design of the device leaves a lot to be desired. Lame.

not sure if serious

Also, my thread was two minutes late but way better. Mod merge plz?

[kieran]

Wow. The best selling smartphone of 2011 gets upgraded specs...and some are disappointed?

That takes spec-whoring to a whole new level.

[drewprops]

Meh, Meh, Meh, and Meh.


...

[Brave Ulysses]

disappointed, not necessarily about the lack of a redesign, but the lack of a larger screen model/option.

4" screens are very nice and still compact enough.

[kieran]

I will be getting this.

Not at launch, but definitely within a month or two.

[torifile]

Apple must really be not feeling the heat from the top tier Android phones. They are happy with their position in the market and are keeping their foot on the gas just enough to stay ahead of them. Sorry for the car analogy but: it's like me in my car. My car is fast enough to stay ahead of most cars on the road so I don't constantly need to gun it. But if I need it, I can. That's what Apple is doing here.

[Mugge]

So, let's recap:

iPhone 4S:

• x2 CPU power
• x7 GPU power
• Built-in image processor for the 8MP still /1080p movie camera
• Siri voice recognition (probably also with special hardware)
• x2 download speed
• GSM/CDMA World phone

Partial:

Geez what did you expect? Have you been buying up Chinese teardrop iPhone 5 cases for sale in the US?



And as for the design, I would like to add that my 13 month old iPhone 4 has yet to catch a scratch. It's an awesome design as far as I am concerned.

[ezkcdude]

Meh too

[Robo]

Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses disappointed, not necessarily about the lack of a redesign, but the lack of a larger screen model/option. 4" screens are very nice and still compact enough.

I'm glad that Apple is taking the time to get a larger screen right, though. I'm sure they'll make a larger-screened iPhone eventually, but they're waiting so they can do it and have it be a significant upgrade that provides real benefits for users, and not just a blown-up screen.

It's just like what they've done with resolution. Other phones had long surpassed the pre-retina iPhones in resolution. Apple waited until they could quadruple the resolution. Looking back, would things have been better if Apple had just shoved a WVGA screen in the iPhone 3GS? No. That would have just made things messy. Screen size is the same way.

I'd rather they wait and be late to the big screen party than put out something like that rumored iPhone 5. I think the current iPhone is beautiful, and I'm glad they didn't fuck it up.

[Bonn89]

My take on the 4S:

Pros:
- AMAZING internal upgrades.
- Siri = OMGWTFAWESOMESAUSE

Cons:
- The name "4S" completely fucks up any decent naming scheme they seemed to be going towards with the 4.
- As materialistic as it sounds, the 4's body design is what, 18 months old? It's tired. I understand that a bump to a 4-inch screen with the same resolution would look worse, but the fact is for games and movies 3.5 inches feels cramped.
- Did I mention how stupid the name 4S is? Because it's pretty stupid.

I know I'm going to absolutely love my 4S once I upgrade from my 3GS in November, but the idea that I'm upgrading to ANOTHER "recycled design" kind of stings.

[Brave Ulysses]

Originally Posted by Robo I'm glad that Apple is taking the time to get a larger screen right, though. I'm sure they'll make a larger-screened iPhone eventually, but they're waiting so they can do it and have it be a significant upgrade that provides real benefits for users, and not just a blown-up screen. It's just like what they've done with resolution. Other phones had long surpassed the pre-retina iPhones in resolution. Apple waited until they could quadruple the resolution. Looking back, would things have been better if Apple had just shoved a WVGA screen in the iPhone 3GS? No. That would have just made things messy. Screen size is the same way. I'd rather they wait and be late to the big screen party than put out something like that rumored iPhone 5. I think the current iPhone is beautiful, and I'm glad they didn't fuck it up.

They are waiting too long.

[thegelding]

any curve at all to the back?

if not, wow...i wonder when Apple will fix that glaring mistake...

apple is the master of glass applications...they can't find a way to curve the back slightly to differentiate front and back in a pocket??

strange...

still I will be getting one...though I might have waited for the iPhone 5 if I hadn't killed my iPhone with Tequila...

g

[Mugge]

I'm not sure that a bigger screen is such a good idea. Many people will have a hard time using it with one hand and it will be an unnecessary departure from the standardised screen size that for all is boredom is very nice for developers.

Another argument in favour of the iPhone 4S retaining the same design as the iPhone 4 is that all the accessories that depend on the shape of the phone doesn't need to change along with it. This might mean squat to most people, but if you don't have a pressing reason to change the form factor then you shouldn't change it. Change for the mere sake of change is not bringing any value to the user and to some users it might be a reason not to upgrade.

The market may be fickle with all it's pundits, sofa marketeers and whatnot. Apple is steaming steady and deliberate forward. Just as any good ship should do. And the internal upgrades to hardware and software should easily impress in their own right. If it was a Mac upgrade that suddenly boasted twice the CPU power and seven times the GPU power of a previous generation then everybody would have been though the roof. And as Infinityblade 2 is already suggesting, I am sure the app developers will some good and creative uses for this extra power.

[thegelding]

Originally Posted by Bonn89 My take on the 4S: Pros: - AMAZING internal upgrades. - Siri = OMGWTFAWESOMESAUSE Cons: - The name "4S" completely fucks up any decent naming scheme they seemed to be going towards with the 4. - As materialistic as it sounds, the 4's body design is what, 18 months old? It's tired. I understand that a bump to a 4-inch screen with the same resolution would look worse, but the fact is for games and movies 3.5 inches feels cramped. - Did I mention how stupid the name 4S is? Because it's pretty stupid. I know I'm going to absolutely love my 4S once I upgrade from my 3GS in November, but the idea that I'm upgrading to ANOTHER "recycled design" kind of stings.

+100

i will love my iPhone 4 freaking S....but it is an old phone at this point...

and naming it iPhone 5 wouldn't have make it any less of an old design (a nice design for sure, but old...and clearly not a perfect design...but a very good design), but 3s was stupid...repeating it with 4s is just lazy....and really a dud of a way for Cook to start off as boss...I expected more. not specs more....a)the specs are great...b) i am not a spec whore in the least....but just pizazz more...

g

[Brad]

Threads merged.

[Partial]

Originally Posted by Kraetos Partial dissaponted with new Apple product because of specs and numbers, news at 11.

Hardly. The screen is too small to type accurately. I constantly have typos. I'm a man and have big fingers. Why can't we have a 4" screen that every other company found to be more useable?? Keep the res the exact same (the DPI is still ridiculously high), and crank up the size on the same enclosure. Happy camper. The 4" screen would be much better for typing, much more useable, etc. You'd all be extremely happy with it.

[Brave Ulysses]

It surprises me that Apple's approach to lowering the cost of iPhones is simply recycling them and not designing new products specifically aimed at those pricepoints/markets.

I don't find it very encouraging.

[ezkcdude]

Man, the market is hating this. Down about $25 from before the keynote.

It's pretty much what I thought, though. If it doesn't *look* any different these days, that's pretty much all that matters. People aren't spec whores. They're design whores.

[thegelding]

eh, market always goes down after apple announcements


this one could be a bit more as there was no SJ cameo and no iPhone 5

iPhone 4s is a great phone, but the naming is not making anybody jump through hoops to get one.

g

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by ezkcdude It's pretty much what I thought, though. If it doesn't *look* any different these days, that's pretty much all that matters. People aren't spec whores. They're design whores.

If they were design whores they'd insist Apple never change the current iPhone design, which cannot be improved. Perhaps they're neophiles.

[Wrao]

It's going to sell like gangbusters, and it *is* a super-phone in terms of raw power and capability. But, it is hard to see how Apple really manages to stay cutting edge into the future. Some of the developments going on in the Android world match and surpass anything the iPhone 4S has, technically speaking.

But it is still going to be an absolute juggernaut, sales-wise.

It is also a little weird how Apple has effectively managed to fragment their ecosystem. Still selling the 3gs is weird. $99 iPhone 4 is weird. 4S looking identical to the 4 is weird. It is not difficult to imagine someone getting a $99 iPhone 4 and thinking they are getting a 4S with smaller capacity. It is also not difficult to imagine someone getting the 'free iPhone' completely unaware that iOS 5 won't even necessarily run great on it.

I was expecting Apple to take a more aggressive stance at the low-end. Making the iPhone 4 free, or $49 and discontinuing the 3gs completely. Oh well, I'm sure they know what they are doing though.

[Robo]

Continuing this discussion from the soon-to-be-closed thread in Speculation & Rumors:

Originally Posted by Partial Not it's not. That's a really stupid stance to take. Does it really matter if it's 320DPI or 295? Who cares? We use displays all day that are much lower DPI and don't bitch about it.

Maybe not. But it matters if some iPhones are 320 dpi and some iPhones are 295.

Let's say you wanted to make an app with a one-inch-wide circular button. You'd either have to make two buttons of slightly different sizes in pixels, or ignore it and have the button be slightly different sizes on different iPhones. Neither seems ideal.

That's why I'm in favor of Apple "doing it right" with the addition of a second screen size at the same dpi. Adding more pixels, not blowing them up. That way, if you were making a game, say, and you wanted the HUD to be the same size on all iPhones, you wouldn't have to make two different sets of graphics for the HUDs in the corners — players would just have a better view of the game in between them.

It helps that I think Apple has more room to grow into the top and bottom bezels of the iPhone than the sides, meaning any larger screen would lend itself better to 16:9/9:16 aspect ratio than a blown-up 3:2/2:3. So I think they'd change the size, pixel count and aspect ratio of the iPhone in one clean swoop — they'd change everything but the ppi.

[kieran]

I like how the iPhone haters are saying that Android already has voice search, not knowing that Siri was an iPhone app from February of 2010 before Apple bought it.

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses They are waiting too long.

Says who? It's not like the iPhone is tanking and people are staying away in droves due to some "shitty, unusable 3.5" dislay"...



Apple being Apple, is there any possibility that, throughout 2005-2006 (or whenever they truly started getting this phone project underway) they conducted boatloads of research, testing, built mocks and prototypes, etc. and determined - in terms of reach, comfort, access, fatigue, etc. - that perhaps this screen, at this size/ratio, was a really nice, ideal sort of way to go for this new approach they'd come up with (Multi-Touch)?

If everyone else is just automatically thinking "bigger is better", and slapping 4"+ displays onto their stuff because they know that enough customers look only at such specs/features when buying, that's not Apple's problem (or shortcoming), IMO. I certainly trust Apple to consider usability and comfort over Google and Microsoft and the others. They've got a nice history of "minding the details" and putting crazy thought into stuff many other companies gloss over (or ignore completely).

I'm thinking that's exactly at play here, after four-plus years...

Because if that's the case, that would both a) explain why it has remained the same for five revisions now (despite all the "iPhone killers" out there having displays as big as a Pop Tart), and b) make it clear that Apple's probably never going to deviate from that, at least not anytime soon; so if a 4"+ screen is the end-all/be-all to particular users, they might either need to start looking elsewhere or come around to Apple's thinking.

Seems they would've done it by now, which makes me think that they've got a really good, solid reason for the 3.5" and have no problem sticking with it after five revisions?

I don't see the increase of half-an-inch, if everything is just going to "scale up" and get a bit larger, much to get excited about. If they're going to go big with a larger screen, it would be nice if it was large enough to truly matter...accommodate an extra row and column of app icons, allow developers to access new, unused space in their tweaked apps, etc.

But here's the thing: if my thinking above is true at all (that Apple arrived at their 3.5" size/ration after careful research and testing), then that puts stuff in a tough spot...

- If only going a bit bigger, with scaling up and no real real-estate/usability enhancement, what's the point?
- If they go too big (join the Pop Tart gang), it may go against everything they've discovered and consider valuable?

Get used to the 3.5" (or start looking elsewhere if that's truly an important factor), gang...I think it's going to be around longer than some of you will be able to stomach.

[Wrao]

Also, this is kind of Off-topic, but looking around the net a little, the dorks are absolutely livid and fuming at this news. One thing that stands out about it though is how pissed off people are becoming that there wasn't a redesign, even though the specs are substantially improved. It's kind of bizarro world, normally Android fan/apple hater comments are about how the specs aren't good enough and Apple only cares about design.

[Brave Ulysses]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 Says who? It's not like the iPhone is tanking and people are staying away in droves due to some "shitty, unusable 3.5" dislay"... Apple being Apple, is there any possibility that, throughout 2005-2006 (or whenever they truly started getting this phone project underway) that conducted buttloads of researches, testing, mockups, etc. and determined - in terms of reach, comfort, access, fatigue, etc. - that perhaps this screen, at this size/ration, was a really nice, ideal sort of way to go? Because if that's the case, that would both a) explain why it has remained the same for five revisions now (despite all the "iPhone killers" out there having displays as big as a Pop Tart), and b) make it clear that Apple's probably never going to deviate from that, at least not anytime soon; so if a 4"+ screen is the end-all/be-all to particular users, they might either need to start looking elsewhere or come around to Apple's thinking. Seems they would've done it by now, which makes me think that they've got a really good, solid reason for the 3.5" and have no problem sticking with it after five revisions? I don't see the increase of half-an-inch, if everything is just going to "scale up" and get a bit larger, much to get excited about. If they're going to go big with a larger screen, it would be nice if it was large enough to truly matter...accommodate an extra row and column of app icons, allow developers to access new, unused space in their tweaked apps, etc. But here's the thing: if my thinking above is true at all (that Apple arrived at their 3.5" size/ration after careful research and testing), then that puts stuff in a tough spot... - If only going a bit bigger, with scaling up and no real real-estate/usability enhancement, what's the point? - If they go too big (join the Pop Tart gang), it may go against everything they've discovered and consider valuable? Get used to the 3.5" (or start looking elsewhere if that's truly an important factor), gang...I think it's going to be around longer than some of you will be able to stomach.

options are good.

The iMac should have never gone beyond 15" too!

[psmith2.0]

Originally Posted by ezkcdude Man, the market is hating this. Down about $25 from before the keynote. It's pretty much what I thought, though. If it doesn't *look* any different these days, that's pretty much all that matters. People aren't spec whores. They're design whores.

They're both. They have to be knocked over the head with razzle-dazzle every 9-12 months, otherwise they're "left out" or underwhelmed.

I see a solid, attractive update to an already-amazing device.