After several months with a lot of hype and excitement, Apple’s unveiling of the iPhone 4S last night was met with a relative thud.
I say relative because we all know Apple will still sell millions of these devices even though it honestly was not the phone a lot of people, both Apple fans and not were waiting for.
Yes, the upgraded and updated innards are all well and good. There’s a new dual-core processor in there, together with better graphics, and a better camera too. But that’s basically it hardware-wise.
Apple decided to focus more on the software side, most especially on Siri, the revolutionary voice-control system that uses natural language instead of preset commands.
It’s like this. Imagine giving instructions to your phone as if you’re giving instructions to another person without having to use robotic preset commands. That’s the promise of Siri.
I know a lot of Apple fans are already calling it the next step in the evolution of the smartphone…a better way of communicating with the one device that we use the most. I get that. Siri, if it works as well in real life as it did in the demo would truly be groundbreaking.
Yet, even with this seemingly groundbreaking new feature, a lot of people were still left disappointed. I see several reasons for that and one of them is the phone’s look. It’s basically still the iPhone 4. People don’t like that it looks like a one-year old device because when they buy something new, they want other people to know it’s new. Unless you inspect the 4S up close, it would be hard to tell it apart from the iPhone 4.
Another reason the 4S was a met with disappointment was the fact that Apple took 16 months to launch this new phone, four months more than Apple’s usual cycle. This extra bit of time made people think that Apple would unveil something that was completely fresh and new. Well, they were wrong.
However, I think the biggest reason plenty of people were underwhelmed with the iPhone 4S is the fact that we’ve all been spoiled. We’ve been spoiled by Apple and by its competitors like Samsung and HTC. We’ve become used to seeing major spec-bumps and complete redesigns in every product cycle. Incremental improvements are usually met with a “meh” and are almost immediately described as disappointments.
That’s not to say that the iPhone 4S is not disppointing. I personally still think it is, even if Siri delivers on its promise. I know it probably will still be one of the best (if not the best) smartphone that you can get your hands on, and to ask for more would seem overbearing and arrogant. When you think really hard about it though, you can’t help but feel that Apple could have done more…a lot more.
The attention now turns to Google and Microsoft. Google, together with Samsung, has an event scheduled for next week where it is expected to unveil the latest version of Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) and the first device that runs on it (Nexus Prime). Microsoft just released its biggest update yet for Windows Phone 7 while partner Nokia is expected to release its first Windows Phone handset before the year ends. Google and its partners as well as Microsoft and its partners seem to have a window of opportunity here, and I don’t expect either of them to waste it.
All things considered, the iPhone 4S is an amazing device…amazing but still disappointing.
From the Outside 