After months of anticipation, Apple finally unveiled its next-generation iPhone. The Apple iPhone 4S will debut Oct. 14 and it will feature a similar form factor to the iPhone 4 but include many new hardware and software improvements. The U.S., Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany and Japan will be the first countries to have the 4S available, while another 22 countries across Europe will have it by October 28. 70 countries all told should be able to get the iPhone 4S by December.
The Apple iPhone 4S will sport a dual-core A5 processor, similar to the one found in the iPad 2. Apple claims it will be rable to run up to 7 times faster graphics rendering than the previous iPhone. This should provide the device with ample horsepower to run apps, surf the web and more. Like the previous iPhone, the iPhone 4S will sport the 3.5-inch Retina Display. While some of you may be disappointed that we don’t get a larger screen, the Retina Display is still quite an amazing screen for text, videos and photos. There’s also no 4G on here unfortunately – it will support 14.4 Mbps on HSPA and include CDMA connectivity, however, which isn’t too bad. As far as battery life goes, the iPhone 4S claims to support 8 hours of 3G talk time, and 10 hours of video viewing, which is more or least what the iPhone 4 was able to pull off.
Other hardware improvements include an 8-megapixel camera with support for 1080p video recording and image stabilization. The iPhone 4 was already a very popular cameraphone and the increased sensor size should please many shutterbugs.
Beyond the hardware improvements, the iPhone 4S will launch with iOS 5, which includes a revamped notification system, improved Safari browser, a Reminders app, deep Twitter integration and more. At the event, Apple also detailed Siri, a new voice command system that we had been expecting. By holding down the home button, the iPhone 4S takes naturally spoken questions and produces relevant information, such as weather, finding a restaurant, GPS directions, make appointments with the native calendar app, dictate messages, and lots of other stuff. The main thing here is that your queries don’t have to be stiffly structured. Wolfram Alpha and Wikipedia are both closely integrated with Siri to return results. English, French, and German are supported initially, with more languages coming down the line.
Apple iOS 5 will also come with iCloud, which enables users to set up their iOS devices without plugging it in to iTunes, as well as sync their media across all of their Apple devices without a cord.
The iPhone 4S will be available Oct. 14 and the IntoMobile team will actually be camping out to make sure we’re first in line. Pricing will be $199 for the 16 GB model, $299 for 32GB and $399 for a 64GB version for the competition out there in the smartphone world is quite fierce, as devices like the Samsung Galaxy SII are selling tens of millions and are providing a great user experience. Even Microsoft has shown that it knows what it’s doing with Windows Phone Mango but I get the feeling the iPhone 4S will still sell a ton of units.
Are you going to get an iPhone 4S?