Apple iPhone 4S 16GB

A few weeks ago I upgraded my Apple iPhone 3GS 8GB for an Apple iPhone 4S 16GB. The iPhone 4S is just the newer version of the 4th generation of the iPhone. Apple is the producer of the iPhone.

Well with a new upgrade comes a new and larger price plan and I had to pay a one off charge for the phone as well. I am with Vodafone who advertised refunding an amount of the one off payment charge if the phone was pre-ordered over a certain period so I of course pre-ordered the phone making my one of payment cheaper around £50.00. My price plan is £36.00 per month which includes 600 minutes, unlimited texts and 500MB of mobile data use. However, my first price plan on this phone made it to £45.00 (how I will never know!)

The iPhone 4S comes in white or black. I went for white because I think it is a little bit more girly than the black and I had the black previously so it was a nice change. It comes in three different memory storages: 16GB (gigabyte), 32GB, or 64GB. I chose 16GB which is an adequate memory store for my music and photographs.

In the Box

In the box came the phone (surprise surprise), earphones, a plug, a USB cable (which connects to the plug to form the charger), the micro-sim (which will be explained later), a quick start guide, an information product guide and two apple stickers.

So is the iPhone 4S worth this higher price plan? YES

Now this review could be pages and pages long due to the iPhone 4S encompassing a lot of new features to the previous versions as well as all of the previous features. Therefore, I will just briefly skim over certain well known aspects of the iPhone in general and focus more on the major advances that come with the iPhone 4S.

Well it includes all the features of the previous versions of the iPhone, the touch screen, an App store (where you can login to your own account and download apps straight to your phone – some are free and some incur charges). There is the regular features like the calendar, weather, photos, calculator, a section to view your videos taken, contacts section (to see telephone numbers), notes section, settings, safari (internet connection button), clock (including an alarm clock, stopwatch, timer and world clock). There is also mail (to view emails), an iTunes section to go straight to the iTunes store where music and music videos can be purchased, there is a music section to go onto your own iTunes music (transferred from your computer), a section to call your favourite contacts, your recent contacts, to go onto the keypad to type in a telephone number and a section to reach your voicemails. There is also a compass, maps and a few other features.

The first brand new feature to the iPhone 4S is Siri. Siri is like your own personal assistant, you can either hold down the main key to access Siri or you can hold the phone up to your ear to access Siri. Basically you can ask Siri to do anything and Siri will do its best to answer your question. I would say Siri takes about 15 seconds to answer your question. So my first question to Siri was will I need an umbrella tomorrow and Siri replied with ‘it will not rain tomorrow’ and it showed me the weather forecast. I think this is a pretty cool feature! Occasionally Siri has its delays if your internet connection or 3G connection is poor. Siri can also misunderstand what you have said or may not be able to answer some questions. For example, I said to Siri please take a photograph and Siri replied with ‘I am not much of a photographer Daniella’. I loved this response, brilliant! It knows my name because you can train Siri. If you access the setting icon and go to general settings, you can find Siri and there you can turn Siri on or off and additionally under my info put your contact name if under your contacts you have your telephone number with your name on it. Then you can also train Siri to understand other information about you for example, I told Siri that Liam is my brother and Siri has now put under my contact information, brother Liam. So I can now ask Siri to call my brother without saying his name. You can additionally ask Siri to access internet sites or ask if there are any restaurants near by. Siri really does try to answer most questions but if it cannot give you an answer it will reply with ‘I give up, can you try it again.’ You can also ask Siri to set you reminders or set your alarm clock. This is a very intelligent feature to the iPhone 4S however, I do think it is a gimmick which is more fun than useful. My boyfriend texts me using Siri sometimes but I find sometimes it is quicker to just text the person because Siri can often misunderstand words so after you have repeated yourself several times it is a bit of a waste of time. I am sure the next iPhone will have enhanced this feature even more.

Another feature that is new to the iPhone is the 8 megapixel camera whereas my previous iPhone 3GS had a 3 megapixel camera which is a lot less. Therefore, this means that I really can use my phone as my main camera and sell my Sony camera, I have no use for it now. The photographs I have taken are fab! They are so crisp and clear which is a really amazing feature for me to use because I constantly take photographs. Additionally the video recording is of higher quality and of a faster speed.

When I got my iPhone 4S I noticed that the sim card was a lot smaller than my previous one it is called a micro sim which is the same for the iPhone 4. It means you have to swap from the normal sim to the micro sim. I guess that this is just so they could make the 4th generation of the iPhone smaller than the 3rd generation. The iPhone 4 measurements are 4.5 x 2.31 x 0.37 inches and the weight is 4.9 ounces. Whereas the iPhone 3 measurements are 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.48 inches and the weight is 4.8 ounces. So there is not a massive difference between them but a slight difference. The chip on the iPhone 4S allows quicker speed and graphics. It also has a better battery life apparently, however, I have found not a lot of difference with the battery life between my iPhone 3GS and Iphone 4S, perhaps because I use it for music in the car which uses up a lot of battery so my Bluetooth is always on.

The iPhone 4S comes with the new iOS 5 technology/operation system which is much quicker than the previous operating system. However, this can be downloaded onto the iPhone 3 online too. The iOS 5 allows many new features onto the iPhone such as the new notification system, from the top of the screen of the iPhone you can drag your finger down to reveal all of your recent notifications such as emails, apps, weather etc. Additionally your new texts arrive at the top of the page making it quicker to access texts by simply clicking. Another new feature due to the new iOS 5 is the iMessage. This is in my opinion one of the best features for me. I have extremely poor signal in my house so to send a text message my phone has to be in a particular room or a particular area of a room but iMessage sends messages instantly to other iPhones on the iOS 5 without the need for signal. So luckily my boyfriend also has the iPhone 4S so this is a really handy feature (it is almost like instant messaging online).

Another new feature is the iCloud. iCloud enables all of your information such as contacts, photos, music etc to be stored so as it can be automatically transferred to your other apple devices wirelessly. For example, if you take a photograph on your iPhone it will also automatically appear onto other apple devices like an iMac or iPad. Obviously this feature is not terribly useful is you do not have other apple devices which I do not. However, my dad has an iMac and iPhone 4 and finds this feature incredibly useful.

The iPhone 4S like the iPhone 4 has facetime. You can see the person you are talking to if they also have a compatible iPhone or iPad or iMac. You can see and talk to the person from an iPhone to an iMac too it does not just have to be from two iPhones. I think once again this is a bit of a gimmick, I have only used it once with my boyfriend, I do not really have a need for it. But I can imagine in certain situation such as, if your partner has a job away a lot it would be nice to see them as well as hear them.

There are some other features to the iPhone 4S but I would be here all day if I were to list and go into detail with all of them for example, there is AirPrint, you can print documents straight from your iPhone to a printer which is extremely useful through wireless printing.

Conclusion

Overall, the iPhone 4S is a fab phone with lots of new features that are all really quite impressive. If you are thinking of buying an iPhone and have never had one before I would definitely recommend it and if you are thinking of upgrading your iPhone from the iPhone 3 or 3GS then I would also definitely recommend it if you can see yourself using all of these different features. My boyfriend is heavily into new gadgets so he was so ridiculously excited when the iPhone 4S came out and he taught me how to use everything on it. I must admit it is quite complicated to use all of the new features at first but of course once you know how to use them all they are great. However, if you are looking for a simple mobile phone for texting and ringing people then this phone is far too complex and you would be wasting your money on it. Apple really have gone above and beyond with this phone and it is amazing to think of what they might come up with in the future!