Apple unveils iPhone 4S with A5 CPU and 4G-like data speeds - Page 13

That's why someone invented something called statistics. Your experience could be atypical. The guy who claimed that he's bought tons of Apple devices with only one failure could be atypical. But when you look at the entire market, Apple is always at or very near the top in terms of quality. And it's always on top for customer satisfaction. THAT is what matters.


I have an iPhone 4 and it's great, but I plan to upgrade, anyway. Of course, it's not going to cost me $700 like the other person claimed. I'll be upgrading for $200. And selling my old one on eBay for around $300. Since I was planning to extend my contract, anyway, I'll upgrade to a new phone with faster processor, much better camera, better wireless, and so on -and pocketing $100.

If the whiners want to stick with their old phone rather than pocketing $100 for upgrading, that's their choice.


ROTFLMAO. Sorry, but you clearly don't understand market differentiation. The people who are likely to buy an iPhone are not likely to buy Android 2.3 phones. Other than, of course, the ones that Samsung make to look exactly like the iPhone to fool unsuspecting customers.


That's the funny thing. These complainers accuse Apple and Apple fans of focusing solely on appearance rather than function. They claim that Apple fans buy only because it's shiny and pretty. Yet when Apple releases a product that's all about functionality, they complain, anyway. Bottom line is that there is a large group of people who would complain about anything Apple did. If Apple included a check for $10,000 and a round-the-world airline ticket in every iPhone box, these people would complain that it's not $20,000 and a pair of tickets.


Actually, other than standby time, I believe that the new one is very comparable to the old one.


The difference is that Apple didn't simply increase the MP count. They also increased the light gathering capacity. There are 60% more pixels and 73% more light gathering capacity, so there's about 10% more light gathering per pixel than the old phone. That counts for something. On the video side, it now does 1080p and has image stabilization - which is also a big plus.


Really? Care to point to a single case where Apple hyped it? They sent out postcards to a few invited guests - very low key postcards saying "let's talk iPhone". Apple didn't do anything else. So stop accusing Apple of hyping the product. They were entirely silent on the subject.


They should have called it the iPhone 1000. That would make it the best phone on the planet according to these people who can't see past the name.

That makes no sense how would every app prioritize or choose the sort order with every other app. That is something that the OS would need to do.
I apologize that that doesn't make sense to you, but just because you don't understand doesn't mean it's impossible. Apps let you choose whether or not you want the notification to show up, how important they are, and often time what info you want in your notification.

Android does support widgets on notification bar. From what I can see its not by default. And it doesn't appear to be something that is straight forward to do.
This is an absolute lie. Please, stop regurgitating something some blog told you somewhere. It's ENTIRELY common that weather apps have a widget at the top of your notifications. You have no idea what you're talking about, sorry. I have a stock widget RIGHT NOW in my notifications that updates my stock (including the Apple stock that I plan to buy more of while it's "low" ).



I don't think anyone lying. Android is hundreds of different phones with different user experiences. Its impossible to say anyone thing that applies to them all.
That's why I was saying do not suddenly say that every Android phone has poor battery life, that's a lie.

Computer dictation applications used by physicians are still LIGHT years away from being truly efficient. Physicians will dictate and then almost always have someone go back and check the work for errors. My point?

The complexities of dictating complex medical language, hell, everyday language, is TOUGH to do....

Ask anyone who knows anything about programing voice recognition software...I have...will tell you it's not for lack of programming prowess, but for lack of computer processing power that hinders an application's effectiveness in "understanding" language.

I suspect that Siri integration into the heart of iOS will garner a very, very useable and powerful user experience.

Why?

The available commands and resulting actions carried out by iOS will be useful and powerful.

A beautiful marriage of hardware and software.

Something we've come to expect from Apple.

I don't know if it's been said already, but to me, this release and subsequent lowerings of prices on previous models like the 3gs and 4 makes perfect sense. The hardware geek screams NOOOOO, bah, meh. And, it is a big MEH to me sort of. I wanted the dame thing to have a bigger screen or shoot flipping lasers or -something-.

But this goes after sales. Apple realizes android is killing because they are great phones and people can get them cheaper (mostly). There's the higher end, and the lower in android. This, doesn't require apple to release a dumbed down phone.

Well, it makes sense to me anyway. Watch as sales go up.

Yup, you sir, "get it".

Where is your facts to back up it not being feasible? Neither of us are in charge of purchasing at apple, so we'll never know.

But 8mp cameras, a5 processor, 64gb, and... Well, that's it, were available (and hardly "radical"). Let's not pretend they were holding out until October so they Didnt have to make two different phones (which sold- and profited in drones).

As a stockholder- if you're gonna postpone another quarter and a half for a product release, you better have radical. This isn't. I'm just saying it's 4 months too late. 4 months earlier everyone would've done cartwheels. Apple and all their blog-buddies screwed the pooch here.

The reaction to this release demonstrates just how many utter fools there are out there.

It's not a different shape, so it's not a new phone. It's therefore 'a fail'.

Simply incredible that these people have the grey matter to get dressed and brush their teeth in the morning. That's assuming they do, of course.

If you want an HTC Astonishing or a Samsung Galaxy S II XRI Plus 3D Infinite then go and get one, but don't call this utterly logical update to the world's best selling smartphone a fail because it isn't three feet across with an SLI graphics card and a 3 minute battery life.

Siri looks VERY impressive. If it works this well in the wild it will be a bigger new feature than FaceTime and as big as multitasking. Those things were enough to make the iPhone 4 outrageously successful.

Heck it could be simply revolutionary. Its legacy may outlast this entire generation of phones. That's the technology that will get better and better and be our primary input for our computers in years to come. I think that's worthy of applause, not insane criticism. I wonder when we'll see Siri in OSX. We only have 300 years to get this thing ready to run the Enterprise...

As a photographer I am very glad to see the camera get this attention. Fandroids go on and on about specs. Having '8MP camera' on a bullet point in a brochure tells you nothing of the quality of the shots you can expect from the phone. This is what Apple do. They make each of their features plain better than the competition's. It's not just an 8MP camera, it's an f/2.4 lens with a large backlit CMOS sensor. It's a genuinely good camera.

Fast camera startup, VERY high quality optics and ISP make a real impact on the enjoyment you will get out of the phone. NFC or support for non-existent LTE networks do not.

Apple stay focused and make the simple things great. That's why they're the leaders at the moment and why they're making huge profits while the manufacturers of these Android monsterphones that people think Apple should be copying are not. Why on EARTH would Apple copy their competition at this point? Madness.

Dude- it's not about a new phone and being a fail. Some people think that- fine, whatever. My beef is why was this not brought out in June. There's no excuse for it.

How does an app decide that its notification is more or less important than any other apps notification? How would an app know what other apps are on the phone to make this determination?


You didn't address exactly how you get widgets onto the notification bar. Which is the point I raised.

Here here! I agree completely. Personally, for my tastes, they couldn't design a better 'form factor'. I think this is a great update!

It's not position to defend, it's yours. You claimed WITH YOUR ANNOYING ALL CAPITALIZED TEXT that Apple could have made this exact iPhone for 20M+(?) users for the first quarter back in June. Not me. Therefore it's your responsibility to supply proof that they could have, not mine.

I'm simply curious as to how you are so fucking certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that Apple is somehow screwing you over and helping themselves out by not releasing a product at the same time each year. You honestly think that makes sense? (I can't answer that one for you either)

I supplied some ideas you could consider that no other phones has or ever had, especially such a small smartphone to help you forge a path to a more objective and rational viewpoint. Instead you decided to get defensive and find your proof for you.

PS: I always wonder how people like you function when you can't take even the simplest responsibility in life and get so flustered when you're called out for your jackassary.

Thanks but I'll stop when I'm ready to stop; not when you tell me to. But relax because we're on the same side here. I love Apple products and I run my own Apple consulting firm. But if you think they don't hype their products simply because they don't advertise them prior to release you're sadly mistaken. They are master marketers and using words like "magical" and "revolutionary" as regularly as they do in reference to their products generally raises expectations for upcoming products as well no? Hell, the fact that they have such big events for upgrades to existing products is a huge part of the Apple hype machine. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's very smart to do. But there is bound to be a backlash for it if you don't wow people every time. And I think they'll sell record numbers of the 4S regardless of this temporary uproar. Because honestly, most people don't care as much as we do and don't ever visit these blogs!

I like how you think you know that for certain.

So Tim and Scott were just snorting with barely-contained laughter backstage at WWDC while they sent iMessages back and forth to one another on their production-ready iPhone 4S'?

While I'd personally love to see something like that, it's abject nonsense.

This is a depressing release, I really hoped for an iPhone 5 with a different case design. I was going to blog a review about the new phone but since it's basically last year's phone here's last years blog post I wrote about it:
http://fifthdecade.wordpress.com/201...-the-iphone-4/

Other than fulfilling every single rumor except NFC and a larger screen.


So put it in a case that changes its design. Boom.


And I was going to give you ad revenue, but I'll never ever go to your site now.

1) I wonder what foolish arguments all those people that were so sure having an external antenna on a phone would result in mass recalls, then a faster than usual upgrade cycle are now coming up with.

2) The iPhone 4 at 16 months old was already the most popular smartphone, this just made it even harder for others to skim a profit from the Apple-dominated handset market.

I'm not flustered or upset in the slightest. But other than the world phone aspect (which, honestly, there might not have been the technology or there was, but I'm too lazy to go look), there isn't anything that they didn't have already.
8mp camera- np
A5- iPad
Antenna- exact same as Verizon (at glance at least)
64gb- ok

So like I said- let's not pretend they were holding out just because of the cdm chip. Couldve been that, but unlikely. The more logical thought was they were waiting on the software- and let's be honest- iOS 5, Lion, and iCloud all in a year is a ton- but the phone should have delivered as well if they were waiting this long. Everything they had to make this phone was available. So I'm assuming it was the software. Like I said in my original all caps annoying post- they could have gotten "wow"- but instead they get "ok...." because of when it's released.
And why is it that if anyone disagrees with Apple, were idiots. Seriously man- im an apple whore, but I also can think outside of the ecosystem.


And just for my own edification (I must have missed it)- what was the simplest responsibility in life you gave me? Because I'd like to do that for a living.

Im glad Apple didnt jump on the bull**** 4G marketing bandwagon. HSPA+ is not 4G.
LTE is 4G. It will be awesome.

And YET, it's still always among the top of the pack on those features, even though there's normally some phone with something a bit "better" 2 months after an iPhone is released, thanks to the "four-androids-each-month" effect, and really is THE leader if you average it out (since most Android phones that have something ahead also got weaknesses such as battery). That's a winning strategy they have

Now that I mentioned it, quite amazing how despite the A5 Apple managed to squeeze a bit more battery.

The problem, tho, is not releasing a dumbed down phone. The problem, instead, is that Apple did not release a superphone. Their current hardware is mid-range.

That is what is disappointing the faithful. Yes, you are correct - Apple will increase profits.

But that too is a distressing aspect. Apple used to be cutting edge, but they have discovered that the profit sweet spot is midrange. And that does not bode well for the future if you are an enthusiast.

Let's think this through.

Apple would have benefited by releasing this phone earlier. There is no incentive for them to delay.

They had to wait until now to release it.

That means that one of the following must be true:

1. You know more than Apple about what they could have done and Apple delayed for no good reason.

2. Apple had a reason to delay and just didn't bother telling you.

Which is more likely?

"apple dominated"

try again

You're not being a very good troll. The trick is to not contradict absolutely everything you see, because eventually you'll be so blatantly wrong that no one will ever listen to you again.

The iPhone 4 is the best selling phone on the planet. The two and a half year old iPhone 3GS is the second best selling phone on the planet. Ahead of every single Android model.

Apple has over 50% of the mobile industry's profits. Only selling two models of phone at once.

Apple has the highest customer satisfaction by forty percentage points in EVERY poll you see.

Apple has the lowest return rate of any phone manufacturer.

Need I go on?

does anyone know if the 4s will continue using a microsim?

how do you know how long it took to fit the new components and software to this device, the new active antenna hasn't been done before

There was a build-up of expectations because they took longer this time around. Presumably they had their own good reasons for this, but, as an outside observer, it seemed like they must be working on something really special. There are definitely some great features in iOS 5, but the hardware doesn't seem like a huge step forward. They already deployed the A5, so no big effort there. They didn't develop the camera itself. So, what took so long? Same case, same screen, processor they already used in the iPad, off-the-shelf camera. Makes no sense.

I'm actually quite surprised they stuck with the glass-backed case. I could see hanging onto it for one full product cycle because they didn't want to lose money on the fabrication, and as a point of pride, but two full product cycles seems like a bad decision.

We can have no idea what forces may have made this an October release. Why assume the worst?

On a cynical note it may have been to maximise profit from the Verizon launch of the iPhone 4, but then why would Apple not say at the time 'there'll be no iPhone 5 this summer so feel free to buy your CDMA iPhones now'?

Far more likely to me is that with the iPod and iPhone converging more and more Apple have decided to shift the release to October for the holiday season. They now have the infrastructure to roll out a new iPhone internationally FAR faster than they did with the 3G in 2008. In reality, getting a phone before August or September was nigh-on impossible for many customers anyway.

Who knows, we'll find out next year if it's a regular thing. Stop assuming the worst, it's baseless and uncalled for. Not releasing this in the summer was not a crime.

Well, now you'll have to say THREE models of phones at once...

That's okay. They'll just make more of the profits that way.

So let's see. Who's more believable - some anonymous stranger on AI who says it doesn't make sense...or Apple which would obviously have benefited if they had gotten it out earlier, but weren't able to for some reason.

There are plenty of reasons why it might not have been possible. Software not ready yet. Not enough of some of the components. Trouble getting the antenna right. Delays in getting FCC approval. Any number of things. But clearly, there was a reason and all the whining in the world won't change that.


Why? Lots of people like it-enough to make it the best selling phone out there (maybe the fastest selling phone of all time). Why change something that isn't broken?

I don't know about that. It isn't all just about features. Though I think apple has learned about features when they finally stopped having such a sucky camera by 3gs/4. It;s also about software. Both android and apple obviously have very compelling things to get the kind of marketshare both platforms have. But apple, thankfully and finally got us out of this ridiculous loop of how many megahertz or how much "em bees" your ram is (I've heard too many commercials where the announcer actually said, "em bee"...) who cares really, in the mainstream, where the money is.

There'll always be the really high end phones with crazy specs to play with every 2 months, but they don't sell as well by themselves (google phones). That isn't to say apple's phones aren't cutting edge, it just means cutting edge isn't necessarily hardware shooting lasers.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with this voice thing.

My guess right now is that Apple is now on a "crash" program to get the iPhone 5 ready by May 2012. And it has to be a phone that blows past all the competition with features like:

1. 4.0 to 4.3" IPS LCD touchscreen panel for easier readability.
2. Built-in NFC support compatible with the Sony FeliCa standard, since NFC payment systems found in eastern Asia mostly conform to FeliCa specs.
3. LTE support using a new, very power-efficient chipset that supports GSM, CDMA and LTE all at the same time.

You know, in respect of hardware, the phone probably could have been released earlier. This release though is as much about iOS 5 as the phone and so, it was quite possibly software maturity that has led to this release date.

Who knows what other factors might have influenced this release, such as battery technology. My understanding is that Apple invests quite heavily in battery research. The new phone is faster (which with CMOS technology equates linearly with power consumption for a given die size/line width) and yet will provide longer talk time, according to Apple's web site. Every improvement in hardware performance would have had implications for battery life. Perhaps therefore, battery performance was a constraining issue.

Depending on the actual performance and benefits of Siri, of the camera (which required an improved lens) and the A5, this phone could prove to be a vast improvement on the iPhone 4.

All the best.

Like I said, I'm sure they had their reasons. But, now they have another problem on their hands.


If you drop an iPhone 4 you're almost twice as likely to suffer fracturing than dropping an iPhone 3G from the same height. The reason is simple: twice as much glass, twice as much surface area, twice as likely to break. Bad design. They should have ditched it.

They probably already have the prototype ready. It just may be that tear drop shaped larger screen thing we kept seeing. Don't tell me you don't think they're not already working on it. If you watch the keynote for the original, Steve said "I've been waiting for 2-1/2 years to show you this".

They made a real cool upgrade. Most people don't read the rumors, so it will be fine. My cousin just bought an iPhone 4 yesterday. Yesterday! I told him he was crazy, but he didn't care. It was newer than his 3G iPhone and he loves it. Most people think like that.

#1

If you'd actually READ the thread, the faithful are NOT the ones who are disappointed so don't speak for us. Let everyone else release their unfinished, unpolished crap, not my Apple. I know that what I have works, and works extremely well with minimal effort on my part. Apple is most concerned with the total over-all experience and prove that they're successful in that goal by unmatched consumer satisfaction, me being one of them. The "you're only as good as your last superphone release" mentality just proves that you constantly need to be wowed and stimulated by the super-ultra latest and greatest thing, which is a very immature mentality. Never satisfied with what you have, always wanting better and more.....NOW!

Apple continues to be on track with their business model, which is the same business model many, many other successful companies use. BMW and Lexus are two examples of companies that keep the same outside "shell" of their cars for 4-5 years while improving what's "under the hood" and the overall driver's experience.

Remember, Mr. Rabbit.....slow and steady wins the race.

My $17,000 investment in AAPL 13 years ago has made me a millionaire today. Talk to me about the same gripes you have today, say, 3 years from now.......when I'm a 2 millionaire and I'll maintain the same position.

As a shareholder and enthusiast, I am very, very happy with the direction Apple is going.

We can start to feel the post Steve Jobs era - getting lesser and lesser innovation in Apple.

They took 16month to come out this iPhone 4S... they could have done better.

I am a hardcore Apple fans but this is a total disappointment. 16months and this is the best they can do? OMG...

Yes, they introduce new camera, 1080p video recording, blah blah blah....this is not innovation... this is something that most of the smartphones on the market already has....not to mentioned iPhone 4S not even support 4G.

As for the voice assistant, this is not from their own technology... it is from acquisition of SIRI and they call it innovation....OMG what are these guys thinking?

The way I look at it, iPhone 4 user will stick to iPhone 4 and new customer will buy iPhone 4 because they are cheaper. 5MP camera and 8MP camera, it is not really different for the naked eyes.

APPLE - WAKE UP! If not you will end up like the fate of Nokia........

Post Steve Jobs?

He's the Chairman.

Wake up!

How do you separate out what is driving the sales? Is it because of hot phone of the month? Newest phone of the month? 3D? Big screen? Dual core?

I don't disagree that LTE - for all intents and purposes, LTE is the only "4G" worth considering - is a nice driver of phone sales. I definitely disagree that it makes a breaks a device. It's just one of many tradeoffs and factors in a buying decision.

Also, the blendblogger article does not disseminate the source of the data. Here look at this list of top selling phones based on accessory sales:

10 Best Seller Mobile Phone in June 2011:

1. Apple iPhone 4
2. Samsung Galaxy S II
3. HTC Sensation
4. Nokia 3720 Classic
5. Samsung Xcover 271
6. Nokia E52
7. Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
8. HTC HD Desire
9. Nokia C5


Not many "LTE" phones on that list are there?

Or how about this analysis from June:

Apple iPhone Leads, But Android Gaining, Says Morgan Keegan

McCourt notes that the iPhone has held up at Verizon despite a spate of 4G phones: We had assumed that Verizons 4G launches would slow down iPhone demand, but that was not evident in the stores we spoke with. Overall, we believe iPhone momentum remains strong at Verizon.