I went to the Keystone Apple Store on the north side of Indianapolis, Indiana today to have them check the battery on my iPhone 4. I felt as though the battery had been lasting me less and less time throughout the day and knowing that lithium ion batteries degrade over time I figured the battery life was just getting short. It turns out that the battery was fine ( well within spec, considering it’s age ) and I opted not to pay $79 to have it replaced.
While talking with the technician I was informed that at 6 P.M. they were going to be releasing any pre-ordered iPhone 4 S’ that had not been picked up and that the line was starting by the door. At this point it was only 5:15 PM so I walked to the outer door to find that I was only second in line. I chatted with the person in front of me whom was a very nice woman and over the next 30 minutes the line behind me grew quite quickly up to about 45 individuals.
One of the Apple Store representatives came out and started at the beginning of the line asking us what flavor of the iPhone 4 S we wanted (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB), and I was disappointed to hear that I likely would not get my hands on a 64 GB Black AT&T iPhone 4 S. My, now previous, 32 GB iPhone 4 was getting full with only around 1 GB of free space so I was looking forward to upgrading.
At around 6:30 PM the Apple store representatives actually started pulling us in one at a time to sell us our devices and to my surprise they had one 64 GB Black AT&T iPhone 4 S which I quickly snapped up. Overall I will be honest that I did not expect much of an improved experience but overall so far I am absolutely loving Siri and the iPhone 4 S. The phone itself feels a bit snappier, although the iPhone 4 itself was already quite fast but the selling point for me is Siri.
On my 45 minute drive home I found myself using Siri to communicate with friends via text without ever having to actually look at what they said or type a single letter myself. I’ve also found it’s extremely accurate at understanding my voice and I’ve found myself using it to enter more and more data as I’ve been using the phone. I have to say, Siri alone, is a valid reason to move from an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 4 S.
At the end of the day, I wish it was an iPhone 5 with a larger screen as well as a laundry list of other upgrade and feature requests, but I can honestly say I am happy with my iPhone 4 S.
Now there are two feature requests, that I would really love to see integrated into iOS for iPhone/iPad:
- The ability to have a custom tone for emails based upon email ID. (i.e. from=”[email protected]” sound=”something custom”).
- The ability to set a custom tone or contact to over-ride silence.