Old Dog New Tricks: Apple Releases iPhone 4s with Voice Recognition

Pat Schiller introduces the coolest newest gadget from Apple

For Apple, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

While everyone was expecting the iPhone 5 – a new-look, slimmer, sleeker, bigger-screened phone, what Apple today released was the iPhone 4s, an updated version of the iPhone 4. But, while the hardware might look the same, on the inside this is a new device.

Most notable in terms of hardare, the new device includes a dual-core A5 chip built by Samsung (despite the increasingly difficult legal relationship between the two companies). What this means, for those in the know (apart from just being “better”) is that the CPU is twice as powerful and the GPU up to nine times as powerful as its predecessor. In other words, the new phone will be seven times faster at rendering graphics and twice as fast at processing data than older versions of the iPhone.

What does this mean in terms of features?

Siri
This is, without a doubt, the coolest new widget. Siri –the intelligent virtual personal assistant who will take voice commands and translate speech into text. She will read you your emails and transcribe your response, manage your agenda, tell you what the weather is like outside, find you movie times in Paris (Texas or France) and then tell you which Greek restaurant to go to for dinner.

She can do just about anything for you — all you have to do is ask. Brilliant.

The iCloud

“The new way to store and access your content.” Cool thing number two. The iCloud will store everything you own in the “cloud” and then sync the music, photos, videos, documents, and almost anything else you can imagine between all your devices – automatically and effortlessly. As Pat Schiller explained this morning for music, you will be able to see the songs you’ve purchased, and with the tap of a button download them on to another device at no additional cost. (The same goes for TV shows).

Global Reach
The iPhone 4S is  a “world phone,” presumably meaning that it will be able to place calls more easily on wireless networks all over the world, not just in the United States.

Web-browing
Playing catch-up to Android, Safari will now reformat the web-page you’re reading so that text is reflowed to fit the screen rather than just to the column size.

And, of course, to run all these cool new features, the iPhone 4s will have a better battery life to support your new addiction to the latest from Apple.

Bring on the user reviews.