iPhone 4S: swan song for its creator

The anticipated iPhone 5 did not arrive. Apple’s new product launch on October 4, 2011 brought two disappointments: the new phone was not presented by Steve Jobs, but by Tim Cook. It was therefore clear that Cook was Apple’s new CEO with all the rights and responsibilities that came with it, and that Jobs would not be returning. The product presentation was something he would not normally have missed. At this point, however, it was not yet clear how much the iPhone 4S was Jobs’ swan song.

The second disappointment was the phone itself. Less experienced analysts and journalists had been expecting the iPhone 5, a fundamentally innovative concept, until the very last moment, but Apple, true to its tradition and development cycle, presented modifications to the iPhone 4 model. There was no iPhone 5; the new model was named iPhone 4S and had only minimal external differences from its predecessor.

Changes were made under the hood, but even in this case, it was not the addition of NFC, which Google and the Android system are flirting with. Other miraculous technologies, such as support for fourth-generation LTE networks, did not materialize either. Apparently, this is mainly because LTE-enabled chipsets are still in the early stages of production and are not yet optimized for battery life or performance.

From a technical standpoint, the most significant change is the dual-core Apple A5 processor, which replaced the A4 from the previous model, while the 512 MB RAM remained the same. The A5 processor also includes a PowerVR SGX graphics coprocessor from Imagination Technologies, which ensures significantly faster gaming and multimedia performance. The new processor has had a significant impact on the speed of the phone – after all, the S in the name still stands for speed. According to Apple, the speed increase in graphics applications is seven times that of the iPhone 4, and benchmarks evaluating the overall speed increase in all applications show at least a twofold increase.

The built-in camera has been upgraded to an 8-megapixel autofocus with LED flash and the ability to shoot video at 1080 progressive lines. Apple has also combined the CDMA and GSM versions into one model in the new model and expanded the number of bands supported for 3G networks. The use of a new chipset, which made this possible, has also increased the speed supported in HSDPA to 14.4 Mb/s, which may be of no interest to Czech users.

The antenna criticized in the iPhone 4 has also undergone changes – the new model has two antennas for the mobile network and automatically selects the one that provides a better signal. Again, they are formed by a steel strip around the phone, but it is no longer so easy to confuse the phone by touching the antenna with your hand. The phone simply uses the second antenna.

The phone was introduced with a new version of the iOS 5 operating system, which was released at the same time for older models and which we have already introduced. However, one thing was new and exclusive to the 4S model: Siri.

Image: iPhone4s_US_PF_WHT_Reminders_PRINT.tif

Caption: White version of the iPhone 4S with Siri voice assistant.

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iPhone 4S: swan song for its creator

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