Apple's Phil Schiller speaking at the iPhone event in Cupertino this evening. Credit: The Verge
Apple has minutes ago announced the iPhone 4S and, just as we reported yesterday, there will be no recent release of an iPhone 5. The device will begin retailing on October 14th.
Phil Schiller, senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing at Apple, made the announcement on stage this evening at the iPhone event in Cupertino, California.
The iPhone 4S has so far adhered to most of the established rumours that have surfaced over the last few weeks and months. It comes with a new A5 dual-core processor allowing up to two-times faster CPU, as well as dual-core graphics allowing up to seven-times faster graphics.
Battery life still remains strong, supporting 40 hours of continuous music play, 14 hours of 2G talk time, eight hours of 3G talk time, ten hours of video playback, nine hours of wi-fi browsing or six hours of 3G browsing.
The device supports HSDPA, allowing download speeds of up to 14.4Mbps and upload speeds of 5.8Mbps – not quite 4G but the speeds are definitely comparable.
The new iPhone 4S also supports both GSM and CDMA, giving it a truly “world phone” status.
As expected, the new iPhone 4S comes with a new 8-megapixel camera and 60% greater resolution than the iPhone 4 at 3264×2448. The camera is said to be a lot faster and gathers 73% more light than the previous model. Interestingly, the iPhone is also the most popular camera source of photos posted to Flickr.
The new camera supports 1080p HD video recording and comes complete with video image stabilisation and temporal noise reduction.
The new iPhone 4S with voice-controlled assistant Siri
Scott Forstall demoed a new voice-controlled personal assistant feature known as Siri. Commands like setting reminders, searching the web or checking the weather are inputted by speech and performed on screen by Siri – brilliant and possibly game-changing. Siri currently supports English, French and German and is being launched in beta.
The iPhone 4S will be available for pre-order from October 7th. Three distinct variations of the device exist; 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models, all available in either black or white from the offset. The prices are $199, $299, $399 respectively but we’re not sure how that will transfer across the Atlantic at this stage.
A new 8GB iPhone 4 will now retail at $99, while the iPhone 3GS will be available for free when purchased with a carrier contract. By December 2011, the iPhone 4S will be available in over 70 countries (including Ireland) and on 100 different carriers/networks – Apple’s fastest iPhone rollout yet.
