Apple iPhone 4S 16GB

Who Makes It?

The iPhone 4S is the latest phone made by the company Apple. Apple were always best known for making computers but in recent years are more known for making products such as iPods, iPads, iTunes and of course iPhones. The iPhone is considered by many to be the best mobile phone on the market to date and is the most popular choice of phone with Android phones coming a close second. There are three types of iPhone on the market at the moment, the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

Price and Availability

The iPhone 4S 16GB is available to buy new on Amazon for £589.15. Which is a very steep price tag. It is also available on contracts from most phone networks, they offer the phone for free with their higher contracts or for a fee with their lower ones.
I got the phone from T-Mobile for free on a 24 month contract which costs £40 a month. It comes with 900 minutes, unlimited texts and 500mb of internet which on T-Mobile is classed as unlimited internet.

What's In The Box?

Apple is well known for not giving you much in their iPhone boxes. The box itself is the smallest mobile phone box I have ever seen. Inside the box is the phone, the little tool to open the sim card tray, a USB cable, an adapter to use the cable in a wall socket and a pair of plain white Apple headphones. There is also a small user manual. That is pretty much it for what you get inside the box. Nice and simple.

Specifications

The iPhone 4S comes in white or black, there are three versions of each available, the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB.

The size and weight measurements for the phone are H:4.5 inches, W:2.31 inches, D:0.37 inch and Weight:4.9 ounces.

The list of specifications are as follows:

• HSDPA/GSM/EDGE
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• Retina Display
• 3.5 inch Touchscreen
• 8-Megapixel Camera
• Autofocus
• Tap to focus
• Face Detection
• LED Flash
• Video Recording (HD – 1080p)
• Video Stabilization
• Front Camera (VGA)
• Photo and video geotagging
• Built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery
• Charging Via USB to computer system or power adapter
• Talk Time up to 8 hours
• Standby Time up to 200 hours
• Siri (voice control)

The phone itself has little in the way of buttons, there is an on/of button, volume up/down, ring/silent and a home button.

I know lists aren’t very popular in reviews but when it comes to a phone review one of the main thing people want to know is what are the specs of the phone and a list is the easiest way to answer that question.

The camera on the phone is really good, the photos are clear and bright even without the flash, one thing that I don’t like about the camera function on the phone is that once you have taken a photo there is no built in menu option to upload to Facebook, there is one for Twitter though. Uploading to Facebook has to be done via the Facebook app, which doesn’t take very long so it isn’t too much of an issue.

The iPhone 4S uses a Micro Sim, which slots into the Sim tray which is located on the side of the phone and needs to be popped out using the Sim Tray tool provided. I would recommend keeping this tool in the phones box as it is very small and likely to be lost pretty easily. If you do lose it however a paper clip will do the job just as well, but it is nice to be able to use the item specifically provided. It took me a few tries to pop the Sim tray out, I don’t think I was pushing it in hard enough, I was worried I would break it or something!

The iPhone 4S runs on Apples new iOS 5.

The call quality on the phone is pretty good, one annoying thing though is that if you receive a text while you are on the phone your text tone goes off in your ear, aside from setting the phone to silent I have yet to work out if that can be switched off.

Texting is pretty simple on the phone as well, once you get used to the layout of the keyboard. The messaging app itself is pretty plain, as of yet I don’t know if you can download an alternate messaging app. So far I haven’t found one. You are also limited to what text tones you can have, which is something that annoys me with smart phones as many old phones let you choose your own text tone but the newer ones seem to have done away with that feature.

The internet browser on the phone is Safari and it seems to run pretty good, it is easy to use and the pages load up nice and fast assuming you have a half decent internet connection. The phone allows you to turn off the mobile internet and only use Wi-Fi which is wonderful for anyone who does not have unlimited internet as part of their price plan.

Features

The iPhone 4S has many features, one of them being iCloud which allows you to access your content on all of your devices that run iCloud. I haven’t used it yet so cannot offer much in the way of a review on it. When I have I will update the review.

The biggest feature on the iPhone 4S is of course the app store. Which I have been dying to get my hands on for a long time now. There are thousands of apps, some free and some you have to pay for. There are also apps that are not available on Android (which is what I used before), for example the Farmville app. I spent hours browsing through the apps and downloading the ones I wanted, there were loads I didn’t even realise existed.

Which brings me on to another down fall of the phone. You end up with loads of pages of apps, it can be tricky to work out what order you want them in. Luckily, as I found out by accident while moving the icons around, if you drag one icon on top of another one you can create a folder. The folders only hold a limited number of apps so you will more than likely end up with a few folders. I went from having three or four pages of apps, to fitting them all on the first page. With the majority of my apps in names folders and then a couple that I use the most left on the home screen itself.

Another big feature of the iPhone 4S is Face Time, which makes use of the front facing camera to allow you to make video calls to other people who have Face Time. I have not used this feature yet as I only know one other person so far who has an iPhone 4/4S and I have not had chance to call him using Face Time. Again, as soon as I have tried it out I will update this review.

Setting up your E-Mail account on the phone is the easiest I have come across so far, you literally just put in your E-Mail address and password and off you go. Not like on my old Android phone where you had to manually configure the settings.
There is also the game centre which is where you can add your friends and compare high scores on certain games from the app store.

My Thoughts

I originally ordered the iPhone 4 as I wanted to wait until the iPhone 4S had been out a while and the bugs sorted out before getting it, but T-Mobile sent me the 4S out by mistake and I decided to keep it. I’m a recent convert to iPhone from Android and I have to admit that so far I am very happy with my decision.

I love how well the Facebook notifications work on this phone, they are not as good on my old HTC Desire. The iPhone 4S is easy to use and it does not take long to work out how to do things on it.

I love the game centre which shows me what games my friends are playing and what their high scores are.

The range of apps in general is amazing, there is pretty much an app for anything you want on there.

I would definitely recommend this phone to anybody who is considering getting it, so far I have not found any major down falls to the phone that do not also have solutions.