The official reviews are in for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 4S, and they are pretty darned good.
Apple shares this morning are up $6.31, or 1.6%, at $406.54.
The New York Times’s David Pogue, The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, USA Today’s Ed Baig, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, and former Engadget editor Joshua Topolsky were all given units to play with following the unveiling a week ago and all have reported on their experiences in reviews posted last night. (Amazing how crisply Apple choreographs these things.)
Pogue: “A lot of amazing technology, and some of its feels like magic.”
Mossberg: “An attractive new offering to smartphone users.”
Topolsky: “An astoundingly good phone.”
Siegler: “The best iPhone yet.”
Baig: “Pretty darn cool.”
None of the reviewers are quite sure if the 4S will compel owners of the iPhone 4 to upgrade. The sense is that the speed, the camera, and Siri will make the difference for those who do switch.
All of the reviewers commend the battery life. None of them offered results of a formal battery test, but they all report getting through a workday without the battery running down completely.
As far as the faster connection speeds in the AT&T model, which includes the “HSPA+” networking standard, there was quite a diversion in people’s experiences. Topolskyi found very little improvement in speed from the iPhone 4. Baig says his test of the faster connection speed in New York and San Francisco didn’t come close to the theoretical maximum of 14.4 megabits per second, topping out at more like 4 megabits. Mossberg said his tests in and around Washington D.C. got 7 megabits per second on several occasions.
All the reviewers report being blown away by the accuracy of the voice commands application, “Siri.” Mossberg says it’s so good, “it has to be tried to be believed.” Pogue calls its accuracy simply “unbelievable.” Topolsky writes “so natural it can sometimes be unsettling.” They all appreciate that Siri has a sense of humor. Ask Siri if there’s a God, and it will bring up directions to the nearest temple. Siegler calls it the “killer feature.” it’s failure rate was “astonishingly low,” he writes, and there’s a chance for Apple to counter Google’s hold on mobile search. “Siri is pretty darn cool,” writes Baig.
Mossberg writes that iPhone 4 owners “needn’t rush” to upgrade, but that older iPhone owners will find the 4S “a pleasure and a good value.” Siri does much more than the “rudimentary” voice control on other phones, he writes. Siri has “great potential,” and Mossberg notes that Apple can enhance its functionality down the road. He found the camera to be fast at both the first shot time and subsequent shots, something Apple emphasized at the phone’s unveiling. Mossberg’s AT&T model of the iPhone still dropped a lot of calls, while as a colleague’s phone running on Verizon dropped none.
Pogue focuses on the faster “A5″ chip in the device, the “world phone” aspect — it can work on GSM and CDMA networks — the much improved camera, and Siri. “It’s mind-blowing how inexact your utterances can be,” Pogue writes of the Siri software. Pogue’s only complaint seems to be that standby time is now down to 200 hours versus 300 hours before.
Topolsky says the 4S is “a gorgeous device with impressive specs,” and he claims the industrial design, identical to the iPhone 4, still hasn’t been beat after a year anda half on the market. The 4S’s improved camera is like a real camera, he writes, and you can finally think seriously about replacing your point-and-shoot with it. The low-light sensor is a vast improvement over the older model. Testing the AT&T model, Topolsky found the new antenna design made it harder to achieve the infamous “grip of death” that led to dropped calls last time around, so that’s a good thing. The “iMessage” instant message software is really fast, and just might push some BlackBerry users to dump their BBM messaging. His main gripe: despite a lot of great improvements, iOS feels dated in certain respects, like the jsway it makes you jump between apps and wait for each one to update.
Siegler particularly noticed the speed difference running apps on the new chip, with the move back to the old iPhone 4 suddenly reminding him of the lag. He too was dazzled by the camera. He found it comparable to his $400 Canon S95 in most situations. “If the point-and-shoot market wasn�t in trouble before, it will be now.”
Baig focuses on the fact that many desirable features will be available in the iOS 5 update for the iPhone 4 and 3GS, meaning there’s less reason to upgrade. Call quality was “generally quite good,” he writes. The new “Photostream” feature will help those people who have a habit of snapping pictures and then forgetting to do anything with them, because it populates every picture to all your devices.
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