Apple announced iPhone 4S in a special keynote organized by them on October 4, this year. Although the world was waiting breathlessly for a completely new, revamp of iPhone series, namely an elusive iPhone 5, Apple chose to stay with their plan of upgrading the renovating the lineup with each two years. They started the trend with iPhone 3GS when it was announced on 2009 after iPhone 3G and it has kind of caught on from then. iPhone 4S looks exactly the same as previous generation iPhone 4 and as Apple puts it, there are more of internal hardware and software related changes than the look and feel. Die hard Apple fans will instantly move to the latest and greatest as soon as iPhone 4S is publicly available but a considerate buyer will always check twice before jumping the gun. Exactly for the reason, we are going to pit iPhone 4S against its predecessor iPhone 4 here. Check it out!
The challenge
iPhone 4 was Apple’s flagship mobile phone for more than one year now and it was truly magnificent in certain areas. Be it their introduction of high pixels per inch ‘retina display’ or in-house developed A4 processor, iPhone 4 sizzled when it was originally introduced on 2010. But the world of smartphone has changed a lot in last one year, Android evolved for the better and Windows Phone devices were introduced by Microsoft. Other cellphone manufacturers were not sitting idle either, we have seen a number of fantastic smartphones with dual core processors and close to a gig of RAM in the meantime. As Apple did not announce anything new phone in WWDC which is their usual time for unveiling the new versions of iPhone, they had an immense pressure on them for delivering in terms of performance and reliability. So continuing with their current trend, they took the processor from their iPad 2 and put it in good use for their new iPhone – iPhone 4S is created.
Round one:
1. A5 SoC
As mentioned, Apple put their dual core A5 processor in iPhone 4S for increased performance and it did not disappoint. To speak the truth, A5 does deliver on iPhone 4S. With its dual core ARM Cortex A9 MPCore CPU and dual core PowerVR SGX534MP2 GPU, A5 is already a beast of a SoC (System on a chip) in terms of raw processing power. According to Apple the A5 CPU can provide double the performance of A4 CPU that they have used in iPhone 4 and A5 GPU is seven times faster than the previous one in used in A4. Pretty numbers aside, iPhone 4S performance fantastically well with iOS 5 onboard. Although the A5 used in iPhone 4S is clocked lower than the iPad 2 one at 800 MHz, iOS 5 is helping the iPhone 4S to run fantastically smooth while retaining a great battery life thanks to the lower clock speed. Inclusion of dual core GPU also paid off with 553% to 702% bump in performance which are in line with Apple’s announcement.
2. Camera
Apple included an 8 Megapixel sensor on top of the 5 Megapixel one in last generation iPhone. It also contains a bumped up aperture of f/2.4, allowing more lights to enter and an additional feature of face detection. The camera also shoots native 1080p HD video which is also improved considering the limitation of 720p in iPhone 4. Apple introduced video stabilization on iPhone 4S which was not present on iPhone 4. The first test shots from iPhone 4S prove its prowess but there are also a slight increase of noise which is not visible for untrained eyes.
3. Storage
iPhone 4S comes with the option of 64GB of internal storage, twice as huge as the biggest available iPhone 4. A lack of expansion slot still remains but 64 GB should suffice even the crop of power users and HD video lovers. Apple kept in mind of their upgrade to 1080p capable camera which produces videos of considerably big sizes and 64GB will be enough for the casual shooters who love to shoot full HD videos.
4. Antenna
‘Antennagate’ plagued the original GSM iPhone 4 and Apple had to opt for a distinct keynote just to address the issue and offered software update that did not actually diminish the issue which was due to an incorrect hardware design. iPhone 4S effectively reduces this effect by introducing dual antennas that will intelligently switch between each other depending on the situation.
5. iOS 5
All the new iPhone 4S will come with iOS 5 on board and it has a new voice control system that is called ‘Siri’. ‘Siri’ will not be available to older iOS based devices such that iPhone 4 or older while that is the case with iOS 5. ‘Siri’ is not a separate app and integrated with iOS 5 for iPhone 4S and performs basic tasks like calling a contact, searching the internet, sending a text, setting up reminders/alarms, starting a timer etc. Apple’s implementation looks pretty amazing and it works very good for the most part. ‘Siri’ is a significant update over voice recognition system in iPhone 4.
Winner
Unfortunately, we do not have a clear winner here as iPhone 4S is not a game changing massive upgrade most of the world was waiting for. It fine tunes iPhone 4 and makes it at par with the current generation smartphones on the market. iPhone 4S comes with a minimum $199 price tag for a two years contract and $649 for the same 16 GB model which is unlocked. Apple also reduced the price of original iPhone 4 which is available for $99 (8GB Model) with a two years contract and $549 for the factory unlocked ones. The price different is not too much for both contract based and unlocked schemes.
Verdict
If you own iPhone 4 already and love the performance and reliability, just wait for iOS 5 to release and update your phone. iOS 5 is bringing a lot of important improvements and iPhone 4 will work even better for you. Unless you are really unhappy with the 5 MP camera and storage space, there are not many solid reasons to upgrade for you to iPhone 4S.
On the other hand, if you own a previous generation iPhone like 3GS or older and looking for a viable upgrade from Apple, iPhone 4S is just for you. It will surely give you a huge performance gain, exceptionally better screen and fantastic camera over your last iPhone.
