The iPhone has been around for a couple of years now and we’ve yet to officially review one. The reason for this is mainly because we’re poor and can’t ever get our hands on one long enough to review one. That, and the fact that Apple seems to release a new version of this thing every few months that we find it hard trying to play catch up. We think the iPhone 4GS is a good enough phone to review since it’s an iPhone that has been tinkered and modified with lots of new goodies since the original iPhone came out. We like to review gadgets after a specific period of time since most of the original versions of these devices are thrown out on the market to show the potential of the device and it takes several versions till the same company manages to reach their true potential and deliver to us a gadget worthy of getting our attention.
Highs:
-Great camera
-Great operating system
-Strong graphics processor
-Siri Voice Recognition
Lows:
-Expensive
-New add-one not worth the extra cost
-Marginal battery life
The first thing that we noticed with the iPhone 4GS is the camera. The camera has been upgraded to 8MP from 5MP on the iPhone 4G. The device makes it easy to snap a photo and includes the camera’s shutter button on the left hand side for easy access. We’re not camera gurus but we can tell you that the iPhone 4GS did take some great photos in low light conditions and has a stability monitor to help stop the camera from shaking when trying to snap a photo. Furthermore, the camera can now take Full 1080p video for those that prefer to shoot movies. The editing software is easy to use if you wish to edit the video on the fly and don’t want to wait till you’re sitting next to your computer in order to edit something. The iPhone 4S comes with iOS 5. It’s a decent operating system compared to Android and the interface allows you to easily check messages with a new drop down menu. In addition, apps can be moved into folders but the iPhone doesn’t have the ability to add widgets on the fly like other Android phones do. Since most iPhones will be used by hipsters or the more casual user, we don’t think this will be much of an issue for most people but some of the more geekier fans might prefer a phone with an android OS for this reason.
The phone itself works flawlessly. We didn’t have any issues with dropped calls. We found out that the previous version of this phone had some issues with antennae depending on how you held the device which would cause disruptions but thankfully these issues have been fixed in the latest version. We liked how you could add a photo to your friend and include their instant messaging handle but we didn’t see any social network connectivity which we thought was odd at this point in time. Another addition is the iMessaging service which is simply a text message service that allows iPhone users to text with each other for free. This is a nice extra but not worth buying the iPhone for and Blackberry users have had this feature for a while already. Music and gaming are on the iPhone 4GS but seem like an afterthought. For a device that started out with the iPod; Apple seems to have taken a bit of a step back in the music department. The sound on the device is as good as ever and the coverflow has returned to switch between albums but nothing else is really innovative in the music department. Gaming has improved thanks to the improved graphics processor. The gyroscopic motion-sensing device will help to create new innovative games as well but the improved GPU will allow for more next generation games to play on the iPhone and compete with more hardcore portable video game systems like the Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita.
The battery life on the iPhone 4GS is good but not great. You can easily not need to charge the device for a day or even two depending how resource dependent the apps that you’re using can be. We are hoping that with the next generation of iPhones we can see this battery life extended to at least 1 week or more but that’s wishful thinking on our part. The one gripe we have with this device is the cost. The cheapest model is 200$ with a contract and nearly 700$ without one. If you add the price of the device and a monthly cost of around 70$/month we’re looking at nearly 2000$ per year. Most individuals can’t afford that unless they want to be eating ramen noodles for a very long time.
Oh, have we forgot about Siri? How clumsy of us. Siri is Apple’s new voice recognition system. It pops up very fast and you can use your voice to tell your iPhone commands like ‘What is the weather?’ or use it to write messages for you based on voice command. It actually works quite well but for every 3 commands that do work you’ll get one that doesn’t work. It’s a nice new feature that’s just in its infancy stage and hopefully Apple will work out any outstanding issues and deliver us a much better voice recognition feature with the iPhone 5.
So what’s our final verdict? Well, for one thing the device is called the iPhone 4GS – A hybrid between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 5. It sounds to me like Apple was trying to make a quick buck on a quickly released gadget by fixing their antennae issue and a few other quick fixes before the release of the iPhone 5. As a stand alone device, the iPhone 4GS is a great gadget with everything that you would expect from the device. Unfortunately, if you already have the iPhone 4 then there’s not much reason to buy this device and most people should probably wait until Apple releases the iPhone 5 in the next year.
[ratings]
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