Thursday 6 October 2011

iPhone 4S - wait is over

The long awaited iPhone 4S has been launched. Although people were expecting the launch of iPhone 5. Investors and Apple fans were disappointed by the looks of iPhone 4S, it was the same as iPhone 4. People had expected larger screen size, slightly thinner model, but, well Apple guys thought to delay that to iPhone 5.

Perhaps the best feature in iPhone 4S according to me is Siri, the voice recognition software that virtually talks to you. You can use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, setting reminders, everything. And you just talk the way you talk. It replies in its own voice. Its the single best innovation in the new iPhone, and it is first step towards the talking computers and robots we see in the sci-fi flicks. Personally, I was amazed by the level of human-like interaction offered by Siri. Hats off to Natural Language Processing.

iPhone 4S has the new Dual-Core A5 chip that promises to be the fastest smartphone processor ever. No comments on that because will have to test out the speed when I lay my hands on it, but the video shows Infinity Blade 2 being played on the phone, and it does look really awesome. The graphics are PSP like, so, they I think the A5 chip will do the trick of a next gen smartphone processor.

The camera has been tweaked too. Apart from the increase in the MPs, it has increased the aperture size and added an extra lens for sharper pictures. It also has advanced face recognition and auto white balance. It boasts of the best 8 MP camera in the phone segment. It can record 1080p videos and use a ‘stabilizing’ feature that can reduce the shaky movements while recording videos. The picture and video editing parts are also cool. You can crop images, auto balance them, edit videos, cut them, add sound effects and what not. It is just another feature of the iOS 5.

Speaking of iOS 5, the three main things they have added are - Notification Centre (copied from Android), iMessage (copied from BlackBerry) and Twitter Integration. iMessage is one reason for BlackBerry fans to move to an iPhone. Every iPhone running on iOS 5 can send unlimited message to each other via data carriers- either 3G or WiFi. People troubled by sending only 100 texts per day in India can take a breather now. Also, Twitter integration is one cool thing for twitterers like me. You can tweet directly from Safari (the browser), Photos, Camera, YouTube and Maps.

Another cool feature is iCloud - Apple’s own cloud technology. With iCloud, you can sync everything directly to the cloud. Pictures, music, videos, messages, contacts, tasks everything stays up on the cloud. The music you buy from iTunes and photos you click on your iPhone go directly to iCloud. If you own another iOS 5 device (another iPhone or iPad), everything gets seamlessly synched to your device. Although cloud is common now, but synching every device automatically still sounds cool. Although this would need good data plans and high speed internet connectivity - both of which still remain a rich person’s paradise in India.

Apart from these main features, they have introduced a new way to talk between two iOS 5 devices via Facetime - face-to-face video chatting. Nothing new though. That winds up the iPhone 4S. Sad it had to come with the death of Steve Jobs. But that is another story to tell. The probable date of launch in India and other countries is 28th October. We are waiting. And NDTV Profit guys are waiting the most.

No comments:

Post a Comment