Following the Oct 4th announcement by Apple of the details of its new iPhone 4s all critics seemed to predict nothing but doom and gloom.
- No Steve Jobs at the keynote, we find out just a couple of days later it is because he was literally on his death bed, but no matter the reason it is a cause for panic. Apple is no more. Even before Jobs was officially no more. Sheesh. Talk about vultures. Though can’t say I blame them. Apple is no longer the plucky quirky underdog so its no longer cool or unexpected to pick them to succeed. Nope the pendulum has officially swung and now the journalistic preference seems to be predicting the giants fall. Thats what happens when your market value is second to one and causes shifts in the weighting of an entire stock exchange due to its unbalanced level of impact when your stocks values jump around a bit.
- They didn’t call it the iPhone 5. It is not perpetually powered by ambient light, able to double as a 4 inch chefs knife and serve as an eco friendly alternative transport method that will free us from foreign oil. Its just a much improved iPhone 4…. the horror! This is more of the same looking for something to tear down Apple with. If Apple had called this an iPhone 5 they would have derided them for the lack of external design change etc… All in all its just a name. This phone brought some serious updates to the table. Single Core to Dual core chip with a serious graphics capability update. In fact this is essentially the brains of an iPad 2 stuffed in the frame of an iPhone 4 and yet with all the increase in computing/graphic power it still cranks out significantly better battery life that its predecessor and is pushing into iPad territory on some fronts. Pretty frickin impressive stuff. 1080p video, 720p wireless mirroring, 8Mp camera that starts up and shoots faster than some dedicated point and shoot cameras. It hits the ground running with the newest iteration of iOS which brings a completely wireless existence. No more tethering with iTunes required. How long have the critics been screaming for that? And yet they seem to simply complain it hasn’t come sooner.
After all the doom and gloom Apple promptly sold over a million phones in less than 24 hours. For the conspiracy nuts that always seem to claim around now that Apple deliberately shorts their supplies for launch take a second and realize that having more than a million units available for the pre-order launch represented an almost 100% increase in launch stocks over the last release which sold out on day one with ~ 600k units. Nobody else hits these kinds of numbers for product launches. NOBODY. If the off contract cost of the hardware is ~800 bucks then over 1 million sold is approaching 1 billion in sales in 24 hours. This just doesn’t happen.
The bottom line here is this. For the past 5 years Apple has clearly put in place the most consistent performing line of smartphones available which have been tied to the wildly successful App store for the past 4 years. Android handsets from various sources can and probably will catch up on both fronts. But due to the proliferation of devices it is simply going to take time for it to consolidate its commodity position in the market. But that day is not now. Apple continues to take the best of available technology and weave it together in the best overall package. Nothing about this iPhone or any that proceeded it was revolutionary in and of itself. The odd thing about the iPhone wasn’t the presence of the device. It was the fact Apple was making it and that they managed to buck the common wisdom of the time for how to sell phones. What was revolutionary is that Apple figured out how to make such a device appeal to the common user instead of just the geeks. It is what they continue to do better than anyone. Which is another reason why so many of the tech elite are turning on it in my opinion. They keep waiting for the unicorn moment from Apple and instead keep getting better and better mousetraps that appeal to more and more people.
Case in point, there is one feature that even the most cold hearted, blood thirsty, want to see the giant tumble for all the stories they can tell about its fall journalists are all seeming to agree might be a game changer. The integrated SIRI voice controlled assistant. Voice control isn’t new. Its been around since a computer could crunch the signal from a microphone. Its been on cell phones in some various guise or other for almost a decade if not more at this point. Its been on PC’s, Macs and of course everyone hated enemy the automated voice control answer service systems. As such the last thing SIRI could be considered is revolutionary. It simply looks to be the first such system that works easily enough that it will be more than a useless ‘feature bullet’. The revolution is not the technology. Its the fact it works. If Apple keeps building better and better mouse traps they are going to dominate this market for a LONG time.
I tend to wait and post my reviews after I get hands on. But as I mentioned before this phone is in well documented territory. I have an iPhone 4 thanks to work so the Retina Display is nothing new for me. Extra snappiness is extra snappiness. Video reviews I have seen show this phone to be visibly quicker than its predecessor. Still… I will revisit the following bullets if needed once I have a few weeks of hands on time and see what needs changing.
The Good:
- Sharp Retina Screen still impresses even if its not the largest screen available.
- Poo the identical form factor all you want but sometimes if it ain’t broke it don’t need fixin. Exactly how much smaller do you want your phone to get? Besides this means there is already a HUGE amount of ready to go accessories with no wait for nice cases etc… Defiantly a mark in the + column despite the mobile phone fashionistas insisting anything new must look different.
- No More tether requirement with iOS 5 and the iCloud connection. Apple is starting to get serious about their Post PC vision. iPad 3 is going to be interesting.
- Better battery life? I mean seriously. For the longest time it seemed a given that the next generation of smartphone did 10 times as much and ran out of battery life 20 times as fast. Apple continues their trend of upending that notion and praise the lord the other manufacturers are following suit.
- 8Mp with quality optics looks to finally make this a camera on a phone without any need for apologies. Fast access tweaks very welcome. 1080p video overdue but also welcome none the less.
- Graphics boost hinting at things to come. Retina display needs pixel pushing power but you can only do so much fine detail that can be appreciated on a ~4 inch screen. The long term goal here is pushing video externally. Untethered device that can drive 1080p wired and 720 wirelessly? Curious. I expect wireless 1080p from Apple TV version 3.
- *SIRI needs its own article… * (updated 10/15/2011)
- Still no SD slot? Really? Least they bumped the max capacity up to 64Gb. But as a new member of the parenthood club I am looking at the 64Gb onboard limitation to support music, photos and 1080p video as a poor match.
- No micro USB slot able to support charging? Dongles don’t count.
- Air Play is still half baked. Almost nothing supports it and the accessory market just isn’t heating up for it. Still this might be the best shot in the arm for the Apple TV yet. iPad 2 video mirroring was a dubious ability at best simply due to the large screen on the iPad itself. iPhone mirroring brings some interesting possibilities. Controller and game screen anyone?
- Double glass case. I have no problem with the overall design not changing. But the double sided glass be it gorilla stuff or not has made the 4 somewhat more prone to breakage. Remember seeing some concepts with ceramic or metal backing. Think it would have been a better call. May consider doing this 3rd party if I can find a warranty friendly solution.
- Lack of official support for 3rd party app stores. Apple should be able to compete with the free market when it comes to apps delivered onto the phone. I withdraw this concern if they would stop censoring app submissions and judge them only on technical/security/privacy merits rather than moral or anti-competitive ones. Prurient content is an obvious example of one such form of censorship… but more importantly Apple often blocks or even co-opts apps that compete with their own offerings. Sooner or later I think it is going to get them into hot water for ‘unfair practices’ similar to the myriad of suits brought against Microsoft in the last decade and a half.
- Apple needs to flex their muscle with the phone companies again regarding unlimited data plans. And they need to figure out cost effective joint plans for multiple devices (iPad, MacBook Air etc…). iCloud is going to eat up 2Gb limits for breakfast lunch AND dinner…. or they need to just buyout a major cellphone telco and turn it into commodity ISP service like they should already be and force the race to the bottom. Bandwidth cost is the ‘oil’ of the information economy. Pricing for data plans are currently like paying 100 dollars a gallon to drive a V8 muscle car. AT&T better not get any crazy notions about separating me from my grandfathered in unlimited plans.
- Buehler? Buehler?
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