"The big news of the day/week/month/year (depending on your level of fanboyism) is of course the announcement at long last of the new iPhone. Contrary to what many had expected the new device is not called the iPhone 5, it is in fact called the iPhone 4S. Before we get into the nitty gritty let's take a quick peek at some of the changes in this new iPhone. First up is the design, which isn't actually a change at all. It looks the same as the iPhone 4 and has the same screen dimensions. However, as Phil Schiller, was keen to stress, inside the iPhone 4S is where we see the new tech. Leading the charge is a new A5 dual-core processor, which Apple are saying is a good x2 faster than that found in the iPhone 4. The graphics performance is better than its predecessor too, clocking in at x7 the performance of the iPhone 4. To highlight this new capability they showed off a demo of the iPhone 4S running Infinity Blade 2 today and the accepted wisdom was that it looked pretty damned good. The camera has also seen an upgrade with a new 8 MP sensor in the iPhone 4S. This new sensor, Apple claims, traps 73% more light than the iPhone 4's sensor. Speed has been enhanced too with the iPhone 4S apparently being able to take its first picture in just 1.1s and thereafter its second picture just 0.5s later. That's pretty impressive stuff for a cameraphone in anyone's book. One of the biggest complaints surrounding the iPhone 4 was of course the 'antennagate' debacle whereby the handset would suddenly loose signal and drop calls. Well Apple have been at work designing a new antenna system that 'intelligently' switches between masts to improve call performance. It's all worth noting that the antenna design in the iPhone 4S seems to be the same setup as that used in the CDMA version of the iPhone. That leads me onto my next point, which is that the iPhone 4S is a true world phone. It supports GSM, UMTS, HSPA+ as well as CDMA. One phone for all networks then, assuming Apple wants to give it to them. Mind you it looks like American network Sprint will be getting its hands on the iPhone 4S so Apple might be loosening the restraints a bit in that respect. By far the biggest wow moment, if there could be said to be any such moments in a sea of recaps today, was the unveiling and demoing of Siri. I'll be going into more detail on Siri in another post, but for now suffice it to say that it acts as a personal assistant and responds to voice commands. If that sounds a bit dry well it isn't. In terms of availability we're looking at 14th October for the first batch of countries, which are the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany and Japan. More countries will be added on the 28th October and by the end of the year there should be 70 countries in total able to get their hands on an iPhone 4S." via mobile-review.com
