Apple Finally Unveils the iPhone 5…

Published on Thursday, 06 October 2011 16:09

 

	By José Leston-Rama Follow @_AsktheExperts_

The biggest problem with the iPhone 5, as far as I can see, is that it’s not an iPhone 5 at all.

 

What Apple actually unveiled was the not very anticipated and widely unheard of iPhone 4S.  I’ll be honest… after months of rumours and speculation this wasn’t really what I had in mind.

The iPhone 4S is being touted as "the most amazing iPhone yet" but at first glance, it’s hard to see why.  For one thing, you may have noticed that it looks a tad familiar.  That’s because it’s rather similar to the iPhone 4.  Come to think of it, it’s practically identical to the iPhone 4.

So what exactly is all the fuss about?

With a design that first hit the shelves some 15 months ago, it would be easy to pass this up as merely a minor upgrade.

But that’s definitely not that case.

The most obvious change is the use of Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS5.  Described as both ‘advanced’ and ‘easy to use’ iOS5 includes an all new Notification Centre, Reminders System and Twitter Integration as standard.  In fact, with over 200 new features, Apple claims that iOS5 will make the iPhone even better.  Although quite how useful the other 197 features will be remains to be seen.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The most impressive feature of the iPhone 4S has got to be Siri – the intelligent personal assistant that allows users talk directly to their iPhone and receive detailed answers back.

I know what you’re thinking.  We’ve all seen those clumsy voice-activated systems – the ones where you have to learn pages of voice commands and be careful not to stutter for fear of calling your mum during an important meeting.  But if Siri lives up to the hype, this is going to be one hell of a system.

The official Apple YouTube channel includes a video of Siri in action and I have to admit, I’m impressed.  It seems that with Siri, your iPhone 4S can not only receive basic voice commands, but actually interpret what you mean.

Let me give you an example:

In the video we see a suitably trendy bloke sat in his car muttering to himself about the traffic.  It’s the sort of thing that would make you think twice about sitting next to him on the bus, but with the iPhone 4S it’s just another way of getting the information you need.

“What’s the traffic like around here,” he asks.

And this is where it gets rather funky.

Siri interprets his question as asking for traffic reports and uses ‘here’ as the location – accessing his current GPS co-ordinates through the iPhone to find traffic updates for his current location.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Ask it to find Italian Restaurants near Broad Street and it will.  Ask it to read out your messages and it will do just that.  In fact, it seems that just about anything you can do with your iPhone 4S can be done for you with Siri.

Just ask.

Of course there are a whole host of other features that make the iPhone 4S worth a look.  They’ve made some significant changes to the hardware – the iPhone 4S running on Apple’s latest A5 dual core processor as well as sporting an 8 megapixel camera that can capture 1080p HD video.

And how about transferring that lovely HD home video you’ve just recorded directly to your iPad?  The brand new iCloud system utilizes cloud-based computing to do just that - seamlessly pushing all of your files, music, photos and videos to your other iCloud devices.  Wirelessly.  Without having to so much as think about it.

Available in the UK from October 14^th the iPhone 4S marks a substantial improvement to the iPhone franchise, but is that really how it’s being perceived?

Luke Westaway of CNET described the 4S as “a slight upgrade to the iPhone 4” and Chris Taylor at Mashable states that “This isn’t the new, iconic, must-have device that a redesigned iPhone 5 would have been.”

And that’s the problem right there.

Gregory Roekens of the marketing firm Wunderman explained to the BBC that, “People were expecting iPhone 5, but instead it's almost fixing the weaknesses the previous phones had.  It will be interesting to see how people react to that."

Talking about the iPhone 4 in their latest YouTube video, Apple poses the question “How do you improve on something so extraordinary?”

Apparently the answer is to shove the letter ‘S’ on the end.

Relevant Links

Apple's iCloud

The Siri Personal Assistant