When I read the news these past couple days I get the impression many people are disappointed by what Apple was introducing as the “iPhone 4S”. I was looking at the keynote, and I can’t help but I thought this was pretty cool. Surely, no big deal about many of the new features, none of them really unexpected. A5 processor, new 8 megapixel camera, and so on. Siri, while there was talk about it, I kind of feel nobody really expected how powerful it would be. The demos and examples shown in the promotion video are, in my opinion, a leapfrog step into a new world. A dramatic user interface paradigm shift. Away from stylus and other last century stuff happened when Apple introduced the original iPhone back in 2007. Now there is another leapfrog step towards natural language input. I think this is just awesome. Isn’t this what we’ve all be dreaming about? Known from movies but never thought possible for many, many years. And what about the other changes and new features? Isn’t it just a little over a year that Apple introduced the iPhone 4 design, and everybody was really impressed (except the antenna design which had some flaws)? So why change that? Are we really thinking a great design has got to change after just 15 months? Who says the design must change after 15 months? I still like my iPhone 4. I particularly like that with the iPhone 4S using the same case design I can still carry it around and not look old fashion. Like in the past when I got my first iPhone 3G, and later on Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS, and nobody could tell, by the look of it, that I had an “old” model.
I believe the iPhone 4S is maybe not a leapfrog step, a dramatically new, innovative bla bla phone. However, it’s a very solid improvement over the iPhone 4. I resolves the only real design flaw (antenna design). It brings natural language input to the world, in a usable form factor. And it gives Apple time to focus their development resources on the next generation phone, which I believe may come with a new case design, and who knows what else.
Let’s face it – the iPhone is still a great phone. I love my iPhone 4. I will continue using it. And in 2012, when my contract is up for renewal I am looking forward to an even better iPhone 5 :)