The lunacy of the "iPhone 4S is a disappointment" crowd | Hacker News Reader

The lunacy of the "iPhone 4S is a disappointment" crowd

edibleapple.com

9 pointsoptiplex16 comments

What the heck, I'll bite.

I'm underwhelmed by the 4S, just as I was underwhelmed by the iPAD. I don't see the appeal of either of those at the price point at which they are offered. In my opinion they're not significantly better than the technology we had in 2000 (although the battery life is tons better). There's very little I can do on those devices that I couldn't do on my iPAQ, or on my tablet computer back then.

I'm happy a lot of people are thrilled with them though, as that means that the state of the art will eventually move to a point where I get to see the value. Now, please, go enjoy whatever it is you enjoy and stop trying to justify your decision to the rest of us.

"a measly iPhone 4S with an A5 chip, an amazing camera, voice recognition, iOS 5, and 1080p HD video recording."

Well, even looking at his list from the perspective of an iPhone 4 user...

A5 chip: I don't think my iPhone 4 is slow in anything I do. I guess the 4S is better at playing FPS that are terrible on a phone anyways.

Amazing camera: Nice feature, but the iPhone 4 camera is pretty good already. I doubt this is as dramatic as the 3GS to 4 camera upgrade.

Voice recognition: Might use it in the car sometimes. This used to be available for the iPhone anyways, and no one used it.

iOS 5: I get this on my iPhone 4.

1080p HD video recording: iPhone 4 already does 720p and I've never felt it lacking.

Perhaps you weren't the target marget. Look at the 4S compared to the 3GS. iPhone 4 owners are still under contract while 3GS owners are at the end of their contract.

As a business strategy, the goal would be to encourage 3GS owners to upgrade. Similarly the iPhone 5 will be positioned to entice iPhone 4 owners to upgrade.

True, but by that logic, it would almost make sense for Apple to go to a 2-year upgrade cycle, since the 3GS to 4 upgrade is also definitely worthwhile for those users. The main reasons they didn't already upgrade are not being off contract yet, and waiting for the iPhone 5 release.

I agree with the tone of the people posting comments here: The hardware refresh is nice, but it's nothing special.

If this were an Android phone, that would be OK as the next super-device would be no more than a month away. As it's the iPhone, though, this means that people are stuck with a device that is only just on par with current Android devices for the next year.

I was firmly in the "there's nothing disappointing in this release" camp before reading this. But I have to say this sounds a LOT like what people used to say about the Mac pre-Jobs' return. As Windows was slowly catching up you'd hear about the elegance of the Mac and how features weren't as important as usability. And it was true but it was also true that Windows was gaining on the Mac far faster than the Mac was improving.

I do think there are some neat things in the 4S but there's no doubt that Android phones have made a leap in the next year while the iPhone just made a step. So while I'd still put the iPhone in the lead I think there's an argument to be made for the 4S being a disappointment.

(and for the record I bought one for full price because I've needed a 64G iPhone to fit all my music for years now so I'm not an Android fanboy)

Nobody said the iPhone 4S wouldn't sell nor that it was a bad phone. Just that we were hoping more from Apple, and that the company didn't do anything innovative this year. I still think the same, but I'm hoping Siri will prove me wrong (because it would be really cool), but I don't count on it.

Don't they realize that the point of buying the new iWhatever is to let everyone know how elite you are? iFans are more impressed with the color something comes in than whats inside it.

Yeah, I think the problem with the 4S is that it's a fairly minor update. Look at the difference between the "smartphones" before the original iPhone and after, the iPhone and the iPhone 3G(S), and then the iPhone 4. Each was a significant upgrade in both technical prowess and on-board features. However, the consumer market has already seen -everything- the 4S with this year's Motorola, HTC, and Samsung offerings.

What is the point of this article? The iPhone 4s was a slight improvement over the iPhone 4, and frankly I'm still shocked to hear things like the RAM is the same and the processor still clocks at barely 800Mhz. For Apple, this is fine. But saying that my iPhone 3gs-holding-friend shouldn't be disappointed just because Apple is selling millions of them, is just silly. He's disappointed because I'm about to have a 1.5Ghz dual core phone with 1GB of memory and a resolution higher than the computer I used in highschool just 4 years ago in a thinner form factor than his phone. He will love his iPhone 4s and I will love my phone, but I don't understand the tone of this article. Is it really so unreasonable to want LTE given the available phones on the market that have LTE? Or a form factor that is more competitive.

I guess from where I'm sitting, I'm used to Apple kicking everyone in the nards from a tech specs perspective, and I don't think that's the case this go-around.

Yes it is unreasonable to expect LTE. The current chips wouldn't fit in the iPhone 4 form factor and would use more power (i.e. less battery life). And of course LTE coverage is a lot less than 3G coverage.

So the tradeoff doesn't seem reasonable to me at this point in time. Next summer there will be different chips, a redesigned form factor (probably) and better LTE coverage and so the tradeoff will go the other way.

Phones on the market and phones that will be on the market in 23 days beg to differ on those claims. Thinner chassis, LTE, at-least-tolerable battery life, twice the ram, twice the proc speed (and dual core), etc.

I was thinking in the context of Apple. Redesigning the form factor every 12-15 months has a cost. For this reason, redesigning the iPhone to incorporate the LTE chips wouldn't make sense since Apple seems to aim for a 24-28 month refresh on the form factor.

I wasn't suggesting that it was impossible if you were designing from scratch.

Battery life is important. So yes you can sacrifice battery life for more power hungry 1st generation chips but it isn't wrong to decide that the battery life is more important.

Seems like the effective CPU+GPU capability of the iPhone 4S is at the head of the pack. When you add in the overhead that Android software has I don't think it is necessary for Apple to goose the processor specs in order to get fantastic end-user experience. This also saves power. Again tradeoffs that have to be made and the ones Apple picked seem entirely reasonable to lots of customers (based on pre-sales orders).

CPU+GPU wise iPhone 4S is lacking. There are phones on the market right now with Exynos at 1.2 GHz (Exynos is basically A5 minus Apple logo), which is in part reason for the disappointment with 4S.

You're thinking from a engineer's perspective, and not average joe. Average joe cares about are downloads 'fast', not that is has to have LTE. LTE is overkill for a broadly marketed product right now considering all the other sacrifices you would be making in form factor, power, buggy new baseband firmware, what people consider broadband speed (4mbps is broadband according to FCC) etc etc.

I don't think those compromises are fair. Again, devices on the market NOW (aside from battery life) just aren't plagued with the issues that everyone's acting they are. Also, I don't know, but my 3G feels incredibly slow after playing with some 4G phones, hell VZW's 4G coverage is shockingly wide already. (Of course, the definition of 4G and broadband are jokes here in the States. VZW and AT&T's 4G isn't even legally 4G, but they lobbied the international consortium to allow them to use the label until they actually get it up to snuff).

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