The day after Apple announced the iPhone 4S, I wrote the reasons that I predicted that lawyers would love it. Now that I’ve been using an iPhone 4S for over a week, all of those reasons have turned out to be very true for me. I love Siri, and even though I have used it for less than two weeks, I cannot imagine using an iPhone without the feature. It is amazing how well Siri works to quickly give me information that I need, and I love being able to dictate e-mails on my iPhone. The improved camera takes beautiful pictures and video, and the speedy processor and iOS 5 make that camera even more useful. The improved antenna is giving me faster speeds downloading over 3G, typically over 6 Mbps in New Orleans, versus the 3 or 4 Mbps that I had been seeing. (It wasn’t that long ago I was paying AT&T for a 3 Mbps DSL line for my home computer, and now I’m seeing twice that on a phone!)
I’ve also discovered a few things about the iPhone 4S that I had not expected:
Louder. The internal speaker on the iPhone is just so-so for music, but has always been very useful for when I want to listen to a podcast. My only complaint in the past was that the volume on my prior iPhone 4 (and previous models) was sometimes not loud enough. On the iPhone 4S, the speaker is much louder. I don’t have the equipment to measure volume, but I can say that the volume is increased enough that I often find turning down the volume while listening to a podcast, something I rarely did in the past.
Good vibrations. The internal mechanism used to make the iPhone vibrate is different in the iPhone 4S. I’m not sure how to describe it except to say that it is smoother and, as a result, somehow more pleasing when it vibrates.
From Russia, with love. In addition to using the U.S. GPS satellites to determine where your iPhone is located, the iPhone 4S can also use Глобальная Навигационная Спутниковая Система (Globalnaya Navigazionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema). GLONASS, as it is more commonly known (and not to be confused with GLaDOS), is a global navigation satellite system operating by the Russian government. According to Mikey Campbell of AppleInsider: “By combining location data from the two dozen Russian satellites with U.S. GPS’s 31, accuracy and speed of determining a user’s location are greatly increased.” Also, including GLONASS support may help Apple avoid taxes on iPhones sold in Russia, an emerging and important market for Apple. Quickly determining your location is increasingly important on an iPhone, so it is nice to see that this feature is improved on the iPhone.
These three features are minor, but add them to the marquee features of the iPhone 4S, and the result is a very impressive device.
I’m also enjoying Siri and like a lot of other people I feel that this version is a beta. I think soon she will be able to open apps and order food from Chipotle. One really cool feature that I’ve discovered about Siri is that she plays through the Bluetooth in my car. After I activate Siri with the home button, everything that comes after is completely hands free. I’ve also noticed that as long my voice is the loudest, Siri only listens to me but she will pick up other voices inside the car after I stop talking.
As great as Siri is, I feel that the microphone button on the keyboard is the most useful feature in ios 5. Having used Dragon Naturally Speaking on my PC, it is obvious that this feature is a Nuance development for ios 5. The commands are very similar and the accuracy level is almost 100%. I’m still amazed that when the transcription contains a wrong word of phrase, there is usually an underline that when tapped includes the correct word or phrase. I haven’t typed an email in over a week. When this feature comes to the iPad I will be able to stop typing comments to iphoneJD. Woohoo.
So far, I’m not happy at all with the 4s. It came with a defective charger. My battery loses as much as 10% charge per hour, with everything but wireless turned off. I have serious concerns about the build quality. The only positive so far is that I had a 3G before, so vast increase in speed. Otherwise, it’s just made me rely even more on my iPad.
I like Siri, but at least one out of every 4 or 5 requests return an error, no response, “unable to do that”, or network error response, even when the request is for something as simple as creating a calendar appointment. I also feel like Siri won’t be “ready for prime time” until it is incorporated into the third-party apps (making purchases, making reservations, playing youtube videos, telling me sports scores, setting my DVR at home, reading my Facebook news stream, reading my articles from my Instapaper account, and generally operating third-party apps).
Also, it may be because I’m too “new school” but I type far more accurately than I dictate, and I often find that I end up correcting my dictations so often that I may have saved time by simply typing the information in the first place. Maybe it just takes practice.
With all this said, Siri has a lot of potential and I cannot wait to see how it is being used in the iPhone (and other Apple devices) two or three years from now.
I agree with the vibration observation. The old one was obnoxious and made a sound almost equivalent to a rattling. This vibration in the 4S is far smoother. I also agree that the speed with which the camera can be accessed now, and the quality of those photos are fantastic.