iPhone 4S

[smib]

I think if Apple really wants to keep dominating the smartphone market they should have made it the iPhone 5.

Nah, they'll just sue any competitors posing a real threat and get injunctions.

 

[argatoga]

Apple and Samsung's relationship with one another has been deteriorating for the last couple years. I'm wondering if there is something else involved in the suits.

Anyhow the bitching about it not being a major improvement is a bit odd. I don't bitch at Intel if they don't release a major new CPU architecture once every year.

 

[prizrak]

Apple and Samsung's relationship with one another has been deteriorating for the last couple years. I'm wondering if there is something else involved in the suits.

Anyhow the bitching about it not being a major improvement is a bit odd. I don't bitch at Intel if they don't release a major new CPU architecture once every year.

That's how I feel, it's not like there is some sort of crazy new tech available that Apple is missing in their phones. LTE is cool and all but the coverage is not really there at the moment as well as battery life being completely atrocious.

 

[argatoga]

I'm also guessing the cost of LTE support (monetary, power consumption, and and space wise) is a bit too much at the moment. If the next phone is wider there will be more room. I have a friend with a LTE phone and he has it turned off most of the time due to the battery consumption.

 

[prizrak]

I'm also guessing the cost of LTE support (monetary, power consumption, and and space wise) is a bit too much at the moment. If the next phone is wider there will be more room. I have a friend with a LTE phone and he has it turned off most of the time due to the battery consumption.

Yep that's what I hear as well, battery life is terrible and that's not something Apple is known to skimp on.

 

[argatoga]

Apple is more about the packaging than being cutting edge.

 

[prizrak]

Apple is more about the packaging than being cutting edge.

They are all about the end user experience for the most part. They are not known for compromising on that and I guess in their mind better battery life would make for a better experience than faster network access (in some areas), which makes sense to me since the fastest network is useless when your battery is dead

 

[nsx_23]

Kind of tempted to preorder one since I have been looking to try living with a non-android phone.

 

[smib]

I will say that they did put a piece of new technology in that everyone else seems to be ignoring. Bluetooth 4.0. This means that, with HS-enabled headphones, you can have uncompressed audio streaming using 1/10th of the power used by BT2.1 or 3.0 withought HS.

 

[nsx_23]

I wonder if the 4S will attract a premium by being the last of the "jobs-era" devices.

 

[Dino]

Just ... no.

 

[prizrak]

I will say that they did put a piece of new technology in that everyone else seems to be ignoring. Bluetooth 4.0. This means that, with HS-enabled headphones, you can have uncompressed audio streaming using 1/10th of the power used by BT2.1 or 3.0 withought HS.

Didn't even know 4.0 was out.

Nah, they'll just sue any competitors posing a real threat and get injunctions.

Don't remember any successful injunctions against HTC.... (IIRC that's the second highest market share handset maker right now)

 

[sifu]

price wont be that high, but are the other "facts" true?

 

[nsx_23]

Well, for a start the camera has flash.

 

[Cold Fussion]

I'm also guessing the cost of LTE support (monetary, power consumption, and and space wise) is a bit too much at the moment. If the next phone is wider there will be more room. I have a friend with a LTE phone and he has it turned off most of the time due to the battery consumption.

For the iphone to have an LTE chip today, the size of the phone would have to increase in order to accommodate the larger PCB. LTE is also not worth it when the LTE chips are made on the 45nm process and use an enormous amount of power, so the battery would likely have to increase in size as well. The likes of TSMC are to blame for the current state of smart phone industry, because of their horribly overblown schedule of their 32/28nm process

Don't remember any successful injunctions against HTC.... (IIRC that's the second highest market share handset maker right now)

Samsung have a bigger share than HTC.

 

[Buktu]

Well, realistically, this upgrade is what you'd expect.

However, there one thing that is worrying me.. With the 4S, they are claiming 200 hours of standby time. The iPhone4 was pecked at 300. I don't how big of an impact that'll have on real world batterylife, but it sure seems like a large cut.


In any case, I'm planning on getting it. I think it's a nice upgrade, and the upgrade price isn't that bad for me.

 

[smib]

Didn't even know 4.0 was out.

It's been finalized for about a year, but only very recently was it actually incorporated into a radio chip. I've been screaming for this ever since I first heard of it.

 

[prizrak]

It's been finalized for about a year, but only very recently was it actually incorporated into a radio chip. I've been screaming for this ever since I first heard of it.

Yeah that would be awesome only problem is that there is a serious lack of good BT headphones out. I have nice over the head ones from Plantronics (they are pretty old though) but thats not something I would want to wear on the subway. I got their Backbeats at some point and they hurt my ears and disconnect if I go past like 5mph on a bicycle (which makes no damn sense since both phone and headphones are on me...) I saw some nice Sony buds but they have no controls on them, which makes them useless to me.

 

[pepitko]

Not many people mention it here, but I'm quite happy with the antenna upgrade. The signal drops very quickly in low signal areas, which should be greatly mitigated by having two antennas. I won't be upgrading though, while I appreciate the under the hood upgrades, my iPhone 4 still feels zippy enough.

This sums up my feelings about the 4S.

 

[leviathan]

I really hope Siri works as well as advertised, gets developed further (SDK for integration of 3rd party app elements into the "conversations"), and finally brings voice control to a level which is currently only seen in sci-fi. It seems to have the potential.

On a completely unrelated note, I wish Apple don't overdo the marketing for the 4S, and do release Siri on the iPad 2 (since it has the A5 chip too) and on the older devices (since the original Siri app actually worked just fine on the 3GS).