The iPhone 4S is Apple’s top of the line smartphone, but is it just a small upgrade over the iPhone 4 or something entirely different? It looks the same, but does it act the same? New in the iPhone 4S is Siri, Apple’s virtual personal assistant, along with an upgraded camera, twice the speed as far as processing and downloads are concerned, and a redesigned antenna system that also supports global roaming for Verizon and Sprint users. Are these new features enough to upgrade your iPhone 4, though? What about iPhone 3GS owners or maybe even those of you who are stuck using some other smartphone you bought because the salesperson said it was just good as that iPhone your carrier didn’t offer at the time?
Hardware / Design
The iPhone 4S combines some of the best materials with what is arguably the finest smartphone design on the planet — you don’t even need to see or hold one to know that. Why? Because it’s basically identical to the original iPhone 4 that launched last year in June.
While the iPhone 4S external hardware doesn’t greatly differ from the iPhone 4, there are some subtle and welcome changes. For starters, the iPhone 4S incorporates the updated external antenna design found on the Verizon iPhone 4. Instead of three breaks in the stainless steel middle band that surrounds the handset, there are now four symmetrically placed breaks.
I like this layout better because while Apple’s “Antennagate” issues were exaggerated, it was still a problem at times if you happened to hold the phone in a way that completely smothered the bottom-left corner of the phone. After over a year of consciously and then subconsciously avoiding that spot with my grip, this new antenna design makes me feel a bit more at ease. In fact, I haven’t noticed an issue at all even when purposely applying the death grip across one, two or even all four seams this time around.
There are also a few physical hardware changes like a redesigned home button(mostly from the inside) that should fix reliability issues. While not touted by Apple, I can also tell that there has been a big change with the microphone and speakerphone, but I’ll go into that a little bit later.
The big upgrades with the iPhone 4S are internal. The iPhone 4 wasn’t a slow device by any means; in fact, it performed and felt faster than most other smartphones that had much faster processors thanks to Apple’s complete control over the OS from top to bottom, including the user interface. The iPhone 4S though, is much faster than the iPhone 4 with most tasks, and it offers up seven times the graphics performance of the iPhone 4. Apps open instantly now, there’s no lag whatsoever, web browsing(which was already arguably better than it is on any other mobile device) is even faster now, and gaming on the 4S most certainly has a notable performance increase.
This device, Apple touts, is the first smartphone to incorporate two antennas that is able to switch between them even while on a phone call, offering a superior phone calling experience. This is in addition to being a true world phone for Verizon and newcomer Sprint, who for the first time is offering the iPhone 4S and the previous-generation iPhone 4. In short: Apple made the best smartphone, from a hardware and design perspective, even better.