iPhone 4S Review (AT&T): A Solid Update

The iPhone 4S ($200 for 16GB with a biennial shrink from AT&T) mightiness non be the most exciting iPhone up to now, only don't write it off: The improved camera, faster processor, and the addition of the Siri personal assistant make for one powerful smartphone. If you'Re upgrading from a 3G or a 3GS, you'll see a huge difference. But if you'Re currently rocking an iPhone 4, you might want to wait for the next upgrade. The phone's iOS still has a couple of things that irk Maine, and I wasn't overly contented with the call quality (though no "antenna gate" issues this time), just otherwise the iPhone 4S impresses.

The Same Premium Design

The iPhone 4S is largely isotropous in design to the iPhone 4, which, in my opinion, isn't necessarily a badness thing. It took a bit of time for me to get used to the iPhone 4's slightly angulate shape when I reviewed it last yr. I grew to appreciate its aesthetic, nevertheless, which is both distinctly Apple and different from the pack of other high-end smartphones.

The overall project exudes elegance–from the rounded, someone bulk up and down buttons to the gang/understood flip and the power/sleep button up big top. Look-alike cobbler's last year's black iPhone review articl unit, the face and game are ready-made of glass that is specially bound to withstand scratches and oily fingers, according to Apple. Despite the keep company's claims, though, I found the frontal and back of that sooner unit tiled with fingerprints after only few hours of use. This year, I got a Theodore Harold White reappraisal unit and found fingerprints to be fewer of an issuance.

I birth to give credit to Apple all clip a untested iPhone comes out for making the unboxing experience such a treat for consumers. The packaging is sleek and minimalist, free of any gaudy postman or app branding. When you slide open the box, you're non greeted by thick heavy phone manuals that you'll end up tossing in the garbage. The iPhone 4S seems more like a opulence item than just a mobile phone. Competing phone manufacturers should pay tending.

And the Homophonic Beautiful Expose

Like its predecessor, the iPhone 4S has a 3.5-inch, 960-by-640-pixel IPS display. When you comparison the 4 and 4S displays to the 3GS, you'll notice a huge difference. Whereas the iPhone 3GS's textbook–in the menus, in apps, Beaver State on Web pages–appears thick, fuzzy, and undefined, the iPhone 4's text is razor sharp, even when enlarged (American Samoa we tried doing when viewing a PDF).

The "Retina display"–so titled because it surpasses the number of pixels that the human retina tail end outgrowth–also greatly improves the sharpness, clarity, and visible detail of images. I compared it to the Samsung Galaxy S II's Super AMOLED Plus display likewise as the HTC Sensation's Super LCD display and launch that I preferred the colors and sharpness of the iPhone over the opposite phones. The iPhone show fades in bright sun, however, whereas the past phones' screens were much easier to see.

iOS5: Good, not Groundbreaking

When iOS 5 debuted, I tweeted that it fixed simply about everything that annoyed me about iOS 4. I was frustrated, however, by the lack of innovation in the update. Features equal tabbed browsing, a single position for notifications, and the power to use the volume rocker American Samoa a tv camera shutter button are traditional Android features. Still, iOS 5 works well, runs swimmingly, and is an boilersuit firm update, and that's really what's near important.

We've discussed the new features of iOS 5 elsewhere, so I'll only highlight a few of my popular updates. The big news show here is that you can finally update your iPhone (surgery iPad) over the cloud–you don't need to connect it to your PC. Other welcome change is the update to notifications. When your phone is locked, you'll regard notifications along the lock screen. When you unlock your call, they disappear. If you're already logged into your phone, the notification will pop au courant your screen. You hind end see all of your notifications in a undivided view in the very Android-esque Notifications Center. If you're exploitation your phone, notifications will appear as a pop-up at the superlative of the screen, past melt. To see all notifications, you simply swipe your thumb low from the top of the screen. Your notifications are sorted by app and category. At the top, you'll also see widget-like buy in and weather updates.

In ring mail, you can now add rich formatting, the like bold and italic text, to messages, along with being competent to indent text. Post now has a built-in dictionary as well. Another highlight is the iMessage app, which lets you send messages to some iOS device, regardless of whether it has SMS financial backing.

Excellent Camera, simply Not #1

When Apple says that the iPhone 4S camera has 60 percent Thomas More pixels than the iPhone 4 camera, it way that an 8-megapixel photographic camera is technically 160 percent of the resolution of a 5-megapixel camera. So really, it doesn't translate forthwith to improved image quality, as many megapixels aren't an indicator of wagerer image caliber happening small-sensored cameras. The high megapixel count does mean that you'll be able to print out images at a bigger size without losing resolution, or to crop images without the planted area losing resolution.

We did a principal-to-point unverifiable research laboratory psychometric test of the iPhone 4S's camera versus a spate of Android phones including the T-Mobile myTouch Slide, which got top scores in our last Android phone camera roundup. The other

Android phones included the Samsung Galax urceolata S II, the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slip up, the Motorola Droid Bionic, and the HTC Sensation 4G.

We as wel tested a couple on of other devices alongside these smartphones. To witness how much the iPhone 4S's new camera has improved finished the previous version, we included next-to-last twelvemonth's Apple iPhone 4 (the black one) in our test group. And for a control subject, we used a stand firm-alone tv camera–the Nikon Coolpix P300–to go out how the superior phone cameras compared with a well-proud sack camera.

It was a squeaker for overall image quality, but the iPhone 4S ranked thirdly in our tests, below the undefeated myTouch 4G Slide and the Samsung Galaxy S II, which came in secondly. You can scan the full results of our tests present.

In my have casual men-on use, I plant the iPhone 4S's 8-megapixel camera to be a immense advance over the iPhone 4's. My outdoor photos looked gorgeous with bright, yet natural colors and sharp item. Lower-lighter photos weren't as good; while the heartbeat certainly helps, IT does give people a strange color tone.

I've never been a buff of the iPhone camera's drug user interface. Information technology is clean and simple, but a little excessively simple. You sack't tweak camera settings, care white balance, for example, and it merely offers you one other shooting mode, HDR (high dynamic range). The myTouch 4G Slide lets you pick from many different modes, ilk Macro, Night, and Action modes. I do like the new grid selection in iOS 5, nevertheless, which uses a bit of augmented realness to help you take level photos.

While I'm pleased with the camcorder boost to 1080p, I don't like the fact that you can only catch video in 1080p. Why isn't there an option to book in a smaller size? True, 1080p looks improved than 720p, but you might not want to always read video in such a high firmness. For instance, have you ever tried uploading a infinitesimal-long 1080p video to YouTube over 3G? It is excruciatingly slow. Uploading over LTE 4G, on the other hand over, is an entirely different (meaning speedier) receive.

Every sole Android ring I've ever tried lets you switch between TV resolutions. This is so far other reason why I prefer the Android camera interface (the native and a a few of the manufacturer-added interfaces) to the iPhone's.

Performance: Data Speeds, Song Quality

According to Malus pumila, data speeds for the iPhone 4S are double those for the iPhone 4, at 5.8 megabits per second for uploads and 14.4 mbps for downloads. The iPhone 4S can intelligently switch between cardinal antennas for level better call tone, as recovered as faster download speeds. Using the FCC-authorized Ookla app for measuring download and upload speeds, I tested the iPhone 4S over AT&T's meshwork in several parts of San Francisco. In the three areas I tested (The Mission, South of Market and Russian Hill), I averaged 0.38 megabits per second for download speeds and 0.21 mbps for upload speeds. This is a far shout out from Orchard apple tree's claimed speeds.

But finally, the iPhone goes dual-core. Again, Malus pumila is playing a bit of catch-up here; we saw the first dual-core phones clear back down in January. Still, having the A5 is better than acquiring no processor upgrade the least bit. The A5 is the comparable flake found in Apple's iPad 2, which is a very smashing matter; when we reviewed the iPad 2, we notable the zippy scrolling in the browser, arsenic well American Samoa the speed when we used iTunes and quickly navigated through various menus and galleries.

As you'd anticipate, iPhone 4S is evenly as speedy. Dual-core doesn't necessarily mean double the speed, but you can see the difference between the two chips the most in picture, gaming, and Web browsing. In our SunSpider JavaScript benchmark results, the 4S had a quicker page payload time than the T-Mobile Samsung Galax S II and the Motorola Droid Bionic, both of which take in dual-core chips.

Call quality was a bit along the disappointing side. My friends' voices measured tubular and constrained. One of my friends according that I sounded as if I were in a burrow, and another reported that they could hear some background noise, but it wasn't too distracting. I didn't experience whatsoever born calls, however. I even tried and true the iPhone in a notorious cell phone deadzone in San Francisco (a street in Hayes Valley). Data speeds were sluggish, but I was able to carry a full conversation without losing the signal. The iPhone 4S's new feeler technology seems to solve any "you're holding IT reprehensible" transmitting aerial issues.

We're still conducting our barrage life tests and will update this revue once we get those mountain in. In my own use, I didn't notice very much of a difference between the battery life of the iPhone 4 and the 4S.

Siri: Your Sometimes Facilitative Personal Assistant

I'm a bit on the self-self-conscious side thus I wasn't really acute on the idea of talking to my speech sound (without someone on the other end, that is). I was, however, intrigued by the concept of a realistic personal helper. Siri is a sassy lesser affair, offering precious and often funny retorts to lightheaded questions (Q: What do you face like? A: In the cloud, no one cares what you look like). Once that novelty wore off, I started trying to use Siri for actual tasks. Siri found a vegetarian-cozy eating place near a music locale I was present, texted my friend spell I was trying to administer flea medicament to my cat, and looked up a recipe for making guacamole.

Siri is bad good at intellect everything you order to that (Siri has no gender, FYI), simply try to speak clearly. I also set up that on that point are predestinate run-in it just stern't understand–"plantains," for example. I do wish that the call up had a schoolbook option for situations comparable this. Being capable to write out the word to Siri is much easier than yelling "plantains! plan-tains!" into the iPhone finished and terminated again. Siri is ease in beta, however, so hopefully some of these minor annoyances testament be fixed.

Bottom Line

As the phone editor program at PCWorld, I stupefy this question a lot: "Should I get an iPhone–or something else?" The "something else" commonly translates to the latest and greatest Humanoid phones. This question is hard to answer because information technology genuinely depends on what you're looking for from your earpiece. Is this your first smartphone e'er? You'll probably find that the iPhone 4S has less of a learning curve. Are you a tech tweaker? You'll probably benefit from the deeper customization options of Android. Want to try something completely diverse? Give Windows Phone 7 a trial drive. If you currently own an iPhone 3GS and are collectable for an promote, going for the iPhone 4S is a no-brainer. If you currently own the iPhone 4, however, I'd urge holding taboo for the next-generation iPhone. True, the camera and overall speediness possess landscaped, and Siri is a neat lineament, but otherwise the upgrade is incremental. You'Re probably pretty golden with your iPhone 4's tv camera and operation, so the upgrades power not justify the cost. Finally, if you'Ra looking into buying your introductory smartphone and want an iPhone, go for the to a lesser extent expensive iPhone 4.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/477450/iphone_4s_review_atandt_a_solid_update.html

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