5 Reason to Upgrade To the iPhone 4S

We were all expecting Apple’s New CEO, Tim Cook, to unveil the iPhone 5, after months of rumors and wild speculations. Instead, we got an iPhone 4 with faster parts.

If the name alone – iPhone 4S – was not indication enough that this is an incremental upgrade, there is the telling detail that the phone looks exactly the same. No five-inch screen, no aluminum casing, no teardrop contouring. The iPhone 4S doesn’t even have 4G! Syre, I am a little disappointed I did not get to see a shiny new gadget, but Apple showed off something even more important this week: an innovation-based business plan for digital domination.

Now, if you are one of those folks who just wants a phone with a bigger screen, stop reading now. For those still with me, here are the five reason the 4S is worth the upgrade.

1. The iPhone 4S Is a Better Phone

Based on the specs alone, the iPhone 4S seems better than its predecessor. A faster dual-core A5 processor, 8MP camera, 1080p video recording, and eight hours of battery life are all needed improvements. The company is still iterating and enhancing its product lines and that is a good sign for any tech company. And besides, I do not think a bigger screen would make the iPhone any better.

2. iOS 5 Has Launched

the way I see it, Apple is like a NASCAR team with two cars, the iPhone and iPad, drafting off one another and pushing each other along. The engine in both of these cars is iOS. Apple is rolling out iOS 5 to all of its devices, including existing iPhone 4 and iPod touch users. If past rollouts are any judge, this will be a swift and relatively painless process. This kind of thing is unfamiliar to Android users like me who are still waiting for last year version of Android to reach my handset. It will utterly befuddle the millions of BlackBerry users out there who probably do not even know there are multiple versions of the BlackBerry OS. Apple is gaining market share and it is not doing it with OSX. It is doing it with iOS.

3. iCloud Is Coming Down to Earth

critics will say that Google has Google Music and Amazon has Cloud-based storage, but iCloud will take cloud services a step further. It is not just going to be a place to back up your digital life, it is going to synchronize all of those items and make them available to you from your entire collection of Apple devices. Take photos on your iPhone and they will be automatically synched to your iPhoto photostream on both your Mac and your iPad. The iCloud will quickly change the way users interact with digital servies and will create tremendous incentive for anyone in the Apple EcoSystem to buy even more Apple hardware.

4. The iPhone Is Going Mainstream

Those who thest the latest hardware for a living tend to forget that average consumers pay for their technology and that $200 for a phone – plus a two years contract – is actually a lot of money. Apple has long been content to service the high end of the smartphone market, but now it is aiming lower and boarder. Turns out the old iPhone 4 will stay on the market (at $99) and so will the iPhone 3Gs (8GB for free with contract). That’s huge! Throw in the fact that Sprint customers will be able to sign up for the iPhone as will, and you could see significant iPhone adoption growth both in the U.S and overseas.

5. Siri Works

Much was made of the fact that there was no “one more thing” at this week’s event. I would suggest that Siri may be that one more thing. It will be built into all iPhone 4S devices and at the most basic level, it is a good voice recognition system. Beyond that, it is an interface for dealing with online search engines and even your productivity apps. Ask “will it rain today”, and Siri will use the date, local weather forecast, and your GPS to find the answer and then tell you in natural language. It is an amazing technology that could fundamentally change now we use our mobile devices. And the best part is it works. Not perfectly, not consistently but way better than you’d expect. Apple owns it and you can too for the price of an iPhone 4S.

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