If you weren’t among the million to sign up for an iPhone 4S on preorder day, odds are you’ll have to wait for more stock to come in. All three major U.S. service providers selling Apple’s latest handset are indicating that they’re out of stock. AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon will be dishing out devices to those that have reordered starting tomorrow, and if you haven’t ordered one, wait times may be upwards of four weeks. Pricing across all three carriers on a two-year contract is $199 for the 16 GB model, $299 for the 32 GB version, and $399 for 64 GB.
The iPhone 4S has the same 3.5-inch 960 x 640 touchscreen as the iPhone 4, but it bumps up the processor to a dual-core processor clocked at 800 MHz, the camera optics have been improved in addition to adding an 8 megapixel sensor. Bluetooth 4.0 is also included, which has some interplay with Wi-Fi for snappy transfer speeds, and a new low-power protocol to save on precious, precious battery life. The most interesting addition is Siri, a voice-activated assistant that can translate naturally-spoken commands into action.
We knew the next iPhone would be big, regardless of what the new features were, but it’s still mind-boggling that Apple’s smartphone is still demanding this much attention after having years for the novelty value to wear off and plenty of alternatives becoming available. It’s a testament to Apple’s ability to market and properly package technology, and I’m curious to see if they’ll be able to keep up this amount of hype with Steve Jobs gone.
[via Bloomberg]