Excitement and Disappointment @ Apple’s new Lineup – First Impressions.

Posted October 5, 2011 by Editor-HH in EntertainME

Ameya Bhabal

AND HERE COMES ANOTHER APPLE…

It’s been a while since the last iPhone was out and, as usual, bloggers have been perpetuating rumors about the phone – some being as mundane like having a bigger screen to completely outlandish ones like having a holographic screen. All the hype and tension ended today as the much fabled ‘iPhone 5’ was finally launched.

To begin with, it’s not even an iPhone ‘5’ – it’s called the iPhone 4S. The name itself creates quite an impression and stirs up curiosity, but more on that a bit later. Let’s take a look at what the latest product from the technology giant Apple has to offer.

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It sports a Dual-core CPU which is twice as fast at CPU tasks as it predecessor and a dual-core GPU which is 7 times faster than the previous iteration.

Next in their bag of goodies is the camera, which is a marked improvement as they have topped it to 8 megapixels. And it’s not just that. They haven’t only worked with the numbers, but have carefully worked with the five lens elements. Compared to most point and shoot cameras, this one can let in a lot more of light. It has also been equipped with auto-face detection and auto-white balance which are features present in almost every phone with a camera. Besides that, 1080p recording with real-time video image stabilization and real-time temporal noise reduction has been added, which is a huge plus.

Up next is the brand new virtual assistant called ‘Siri’. As the name suggests, its basic function is to help the user search for anything and everything in your phone as well as assist you with your schedules, locations, weather updates and web-surfing.

At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple released the AirPlay Mirroring for the iPad2 which now makes a comeback in the iOS5. You can now connect your phone to the TV and mirror whatever you are playing onto the TV screen.

A new app called Find my Friends is available in the new OS. The app, as the name suggests, helps you find your friends’ location but with the necessary privacy settings at your disposal to avoid being stalked.

Also part of the new update is the more intimate connectivity with Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha – the former being the famous web-encyclopedia and the latter, being a much obscure yet powerful search engine.

As for the battery, we have a not so majorly-improved battery life, where you get 8 hours talk-time on a 3G network or 14 hours on 2G. It offers 9 hours of web browsing over a WiFi network and about 10 hours of video playback with 40 hours of music.

Talking about its external appearance, not much difference can be observed. Its design is the same as the iPhone 4, with the same shape and 3.5” Retina display screen.

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Photo Credits – All images have been taken from www.engadget.com during their live blog of the Apple press release – “Let’s Talk Iphone’. Follow the entire live blog - http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/04/apples-lets-talk-iphone-keynote-liveblog/

So, with these features, does the iPhone 4S stand out? Not quite. Coming back to the name, it gives us a feeling that it’s just an augmented version of the iPhone 4. With hardware tweaks, the phone doesn’t seem to do much to overwhelm one as a user unlike the previous installments. There is no doubt that it’s a really good phone, but it should’ve been released a year ago. Over the year, Samsung and HTC – who are the flagship models for the Android – have been catching up with an astounding rate in terms of popularity, even though a while back it seemed they weren’t close competitors. Today, even the optimistic ones can feel the gap closing in.

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