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Apple Unveils New iPhone 4S

Apple on Tuesday finally unveiled a new iPhone—the iPhone 4S. Sprint was also added to the iPhone carrier lineup. Pre-orders for the device start October 7 and they will be in stores on October 14. The iPhone 4S will come in black and white. A 16GB will cost $199, the 32GB will be $299, and, for the first time, a 64GB version will be $399. “Don’t be fooled. Inside it is all new,” Apple’s Phil Schiller said. That includes Apple’s new dual-core A5 chip, as well as dual-core graphics and 7x faster performance, with the same retina display found on the iPhone 4. Schiller said users will get eight hours of 3G talk time with the iPhone 4S, for the first time. He also said the device will “intelligently switch between two antennas to improve call quality” and double download speeds. It will support HSPA+ 14.4, which can deliver speeds up to 14.4 Mbps. The “world phone” will support both CDMA and GSM networks. One of the updates coming to the 4S is voice recognition. “We really just want to be able to talk to our device. Tell it what we want and have it do it for you,” Forstall said. iPhone 4S Last year, Apple acquired voice-recognition application startup Siri and added some voice-to-text features to iOS 4. That option will be beefed up with the iPhone 4S to understand context and allow you to speak naturally when you ask it questions, Apple said. Forstall asked Siri for the weather, for example, and it spit out the forecast. It also told him the time in Paris, and the status of the NASDAQ, and also provided restaurant recommendations for Palo Alto, sourced from Yelp. Siri can also read messages aloud so you don’t have to read them on the screen, Forstall said. Voice-activated search is also supported. Siri is incorporated into the navigation of the device, so you can have Siri do just about anything you would do with your phone, according to Forstall. “You can manage your calendar now with your voice. You can compose and dictate emails right to Siri.” The technology will initially include support for English, French, and German. It will debut as a beta, meaning Apple will add more languages and services over time. Readmore