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Samsung Galaxy Note. First Look
Today, large companies, especially corporate giants like Samsung, do not surprise users with extraordinary products... |
| Apple In A Post Jobsian World HTC Sensation In Use iPhone 4S: Part One |
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Tuesday 04 October 2011
Video: iPhone 4S & Siri Adverts
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Author: Ivanov Konstantin Source: http://www.electronista.com/ Translation by: Paul Smith
Now that the initial excitement over today's Apple event is over I thought it might be worth spending a few minutes jotting down some initial impressions of the day's events. The chief component of the day was of course the iPhone, but there was plenty of other stuff in there as well.
iOS 5 isn't just for the iPhone 4S, it will be available to iPhone 4 and iPod Touch users come 12th October, two days before the iPhone 4S goes on sale. It will mark the last time an update has to be completed through iTunes as iOS 5 will usher in an era of wireless OTA updates.
12th October also sees the release of Apple iCloud service, what some might call Mobile Me mark two. It's cloud based computing and all users get 5 GB worth of storage with the free service. It's not just about storing items in the cloud though, iCloud will allow iOS users to sync their purchases and content across multiple iOS devices.
Now the big hitter is of course the iPhone 4S and that will be appearing in select countries on 14th October. Now the new handset does feature some uprated specs, but as the name suggests this isn't anything revolutionary in the way that the iPhone 3G was a major step up from the original iPhone or the iPhone 4 was a major step beyond the iPhone 3G/3GS. It's an incremental upgrade. That's not to say that the shiny new bells and whistles aren't nice, but fundamentally it's a faster iPhone 4 with a better camera attached.
The biggest attraction is undoutedly Siri, which I go into a bit more detail on here.
If all that sounds as if I'm being anti-Apple I'm not. I actually use an iPhone myself as it happens. However, the iPhone 4S isn't the major upgrade that many may have expected today, indeed right up until the last minute some were still expecting a full blown iPhone 5 to make an appearance. That will bea device for another year by the looks of it. Still the iPhone 4S looks to be a pretty decent handset although I won't be trading in my iPhone 4 any time soon either.
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Author: Ivanov Konstantin Source: http://online.wsj.com/ Translation by: Paul Smith
Arguably the most impressive feature in today'siPhone 4S announcement was Siri. For those who don't know Siri acts as a personal assistant and responds to voice commands. Now that doesn't sound particularly impressive on the face of it, after all that sort of tech has been around for a while now and of course Android features something similar at the moment. Like most things Apple does though it was all about how they did it today, not so much that the concept is original.
For starters the system appears far more natural than most of these voice recognition system. For example, at one point Siri was asked whether the user would need a raincoat today. Siri replied "It sure looks like rain today". Very clever. And certainly impressive from the point of view of interaction.
It's not just weather forecasts that Siri can handle though. Another demonstration showed the user wearing a Bluetooth headset whilst his iPhone 4S was in his pocket. He received a text message, but rather than taking his iPhone out to look at it he simply asked Siri to read it for him, which she did and it was read out through the Bluetooth headset. The user then asked Siri to reply to the text, which she did. All without ever having to touch the phone.
Siri incorporates Wolfram Alpha so you can ask Siri fairly complex questions and get an answer. For example, you could ask Siri how many dollars £10 is worth and she will bring up the amount along with the exchange rate. Or you could ask her what a particular word means and again she will use Wolfram Alpha to bring up a definition. All in a pretty useful sounding service ...
... or is it? As much as I was impressed by the ease of use I do wonder how useful and/or practical this will be in everyday situations. It reminds me a little of video calling in that the feature looks very impressive, but people generally didn't bother with in public for fear of looking silly as well as its limited practical use in everyday situations. Will Siri go the same way? Poossibly, but to be fair to Siri the system covers a range of different services, some of which I mentioned above, so it's not quite as narrow a focus as video calling.
At any rate we'll have to wait until we get our hands on it to really put Siri through her paces, but as Siri herself replied when asked who she was "I am a humble digital asistant".
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Author: Serge Novikov Source: Gizmodo Translation by: Paul Smith
Gizmodo have posted up a handy comparison chart to guage how the new iPhone 4S compares to other handsets on the market right now.
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Author: Irina Turina Translation by: Paul Smith
The big news of the day/week/month/year (depending on your level of fanboyism) is of course the announcement at long last of the new iPhone. Contrary to what many had expected the new device is not called the iPhone 5, it is in fact called the iPhone 4S. Before we get into the nitty gritty let's take a quick peek at some of the changes in this new iPhone.
First up is the design, which isn't actually a change at all. It looks the same as the iPhone 4 and has the same screen dimensions. However, as Phil Schiller, was keen to stress, inside the iPhone 4S is where we see the new tech.
Leading the charge is a new A5 dual-core processor, which Apple are saying is a good x2 faster than that found in the iPhone 4. The graphics performance is better than its predecessor too, clocking in at x7 the performance of the iPhone 4. To highlight this new capability they showed off a demo of the iPhone 4S running Infinity Blade 2 today and the accepted wisdom was that it looked pretty damned good.
The camera has also seen an upgrade with a new 8 MP sensor in the iPhone 4S. This new sensor, Apple claims, traps 73% more light than the iPhone 4's sensor. Speed has been enhanced too with the iPhone 4S apparently being able to take its first picture in just 1.1s and thereafter its second picture just 0.5s later. That's pretty impressive stuff for a cameraphone in anyone's book.
One of the biggest complaints surrounding the iPhone 4 was of course the 'antennagate' debacle whereby the handset would suddenly loose signal and drop calls. Well Apple have been at work designing a new antenna system that 'intelligently' switches between masts to improve call performance. It's all worth noting that the antenna design in the iPhone 4S seems to be the same setup as that used in the CDMA version of the iPhone.
That leads me onto my next point, which is that the iPhone 4S is a true world phone. It supports GSM, UMTS, HSPA+ as well as CDMA. One phone for all networks then, assuming Apple wants to give it to them. Mind you it looks like American network Sprint will be getting its hands on the iPhone 4S so Apple might be loosening the restraints a bit in that respect.
By far the biggest wow moment, if there could be said to be any such moments in a sea of recaps today, was the unveiling and demoing of Siri. I'll be going into more detail on Siri in another post, but for now suffice it to say that it acts as a personal assistant and responds to voice commands. If that sounds a bit dry well it isn't.
In terms of availability we're looking at 14th October for the first batch of countries, which are the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany and Japan. More countries will be added on the 28th October and by the end of the year there should be 70 countries in total able to get their hands on an iPhone 4S.
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