Is the iPhone 4S Worth It?

After over a year of rumours and conjecture, and at least one major delay, yesterday finally brought the latest Apple smartphone release with the iPhone 4S. Expectations seemed to surround the release of an iPhone 5, complete with new format and size and revolutionary, industry leading features. But what was released was an iPhone 4 with improved innards and an OS update, iOS 5, that enhances the phone, but also enhances all iPhones as far back as the 3GS. So what was announced and what does it mean to those thinking of updating?

8MP Camera with 1080P Video

The past three years have seen smartphones slowly chip away at the “point and shoot” camera world with gradually increasing megapixels and features. The world has responded by slowly leaving their old cameras at home – a search on Flickr shows the iPhone is the most used “camera” on the photo sharing website. The iPhone 4S had no choice but to reach the 8MP standard set by competitive smartphones, also matching the new 1080P standard for HD video on the go. Apple has also added a fifth lens, an enlarged f/2.4 aperture, an advanced hybrid infrafred filter, face detection and reduced motion blur. The new iPhone even captures extreme and low light conditions well, a drawback existing iPhone owners are all-too-aware of. Once the picture is snapped the new iPhone allows on-the-fly editing, including cropping, rotation, enhancements and red-eye removal, right on the phone.

iCloud

The iCloud had been heavily rumoured and was quietly slipped in to the day’s festivities. Users of any Apple devices, not just the new iPhone 4S, can now store music, photos, documents, apps, books and more wirelessly, and they’re instantly available on all devices. Photos taken are instantly and automatically shared, and for the first time a user’s app downloads can be re-downloaded later. Perhaps best of all to those who’ve experienced a catastrophic crash, iCloud backs up the iOS device daily by Wi-Fi, meaning you’re less likely to “lose everything” later.

Dual Core Processing

Another area the iPhone was left to play catch-up in was stronger processing power to handle the demands of the modern smartphone user. The iPhone 4S offers the same dual-core A5 chip found in the iPad 2, providing double the power, 7-times faster graphics, and 14.4 Mbps download speeds.

Siri, the Intelligent Assistant

Finally, one of the more talked about launches is Siri, allowing iPhone users to control their iPhone through voice commands. Users can speak commands to their phone including sending messages, placing calls, setting calendar items and more. Simply speaking to your phone (strange, I know) can help you find a restaurant near your current location, or reply to that email while driving. And Siri works beyond just core iPhone apps, you can use it to Tweet, update Facebook and more. At best Siri will finally bring artificial intelligence to the masses, allowing you to truly treat your phone like a personal assistant. At worst, as Mobile Commerce Daily so eloquently put it, Apple has just launched their own version of the famed Microsoft Office paperclip. I’d lean towards the former.

The Details

Smaller items and upgrades, mostly through iOS 5 rather than the iPhone 4S, are the ability to message users of other devices using iOS (iPhone, iPod and iPad) free without texting and updated notifications in a notifications tray of sorts, finally providing an option outside of pop-up push notifications. And iOS users can now download Newsstand to curate their magazine, newspaper and content subscriptions into one iBooks-like application interface. Finally, for those amongst you with the wanderlust, iPhone 4S finally brings a world phone to the iPhone lineup, as it will now support both GSM and CDMA.

So in conclusion does the iPhone 4S provide enough value to warrant the upgrade? Or does it suffer under the weight of high expectations? The answer is probably both. The iPhone 4S is exactly that, an improved version of the iPhone 4, and not the iPhone 5 so many were hoping for. The upgraded iOS 5 arriving next week will provide many of the benefits discussed here on older phones, and with the iPhone 4 now available at a discounted price, it may provide enough of the value most seek. For a 3GS user nearing the end of their term it’s the perfect time to make a move. For a 4 user, as I have been, next year’s iPhone 5 is a more inviting.