IPhone 4S Review | Hacker News Reader

IPhone 4S Review

thisismynext.com

Right off this comment gave me pause in the review:

"It’s kind of incredible when you think about it. Competing phone-makers have had more than a year (a lot more considering the leaked photos of the iPhone 4 prior to its release) to best this design, and yet no one really has. As frustrating as it is to say this, no other phone on the market comes close to this level of craftsmanship, materials, or considered design."

This is a very personally subjective statement. To me the phone's design is a brick with rounded corners, I was rather disappointed when it launched. I've never really thought there was a lot of 'design' to the iPhone 4. I agree it's clean but really, is there much to 'best' design wise? I personally find it ergonomically uncomfortable and awkward.

Interesting he then follows with: "The iPhone 4S may not be the most resilient phone in the world (I’ve broken two original iPhone 4s in accidental drops), but it probably is the most beautiful."

Perhaps other phone designers haven't copied it because glass front and back and an exposed antenna aren't things that they might want to copy? The fact that the reviewer has broken two only adds to that.

I'm sure everyone thinks differently on this subject but that's exactly my point... that a comment like this really doesn't belong in what should be a generally objective review. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The rest of the review I thought was well done though.

Edit, and yes, I fully expect the Karma hit for criticizing a design aspect of an Apple product. :) Just my 2c.

Reviews can be subjective and there is nothing wrong with that. You read it, you disagree with it and that’s alright.

I completely agree with you. When I first saw the iPhone 4 launching, I thought a glass body like that sounds pretty cool. Then months later when I first held an iPhone 4 in hand myself, I have to say I was quite disappointed with how it felt. It really felt like if I drop it it would shatter into many pieces. I have an older HTC phone with aluminum body, and it feels a lot more solid than the iPhone 4. In fact even some of the plastic bodies out there like the one on LG Optimus Black which I tested myself, feels more solid than iPhone 4. So yeah, I can't say I'm surprised not many others wanted to copy it this time.

As for the design, I guess it's a matter of taste, but I prefer phones with rounder corners. The rounded shape also feels better in hand than the squarish one.

After watching the video demoing Siri at Gizmodo[1] and saw a screenshot in the article[2], I'm very surprised at how "human" Siri is.

And there's this:

> Asking it “what is the meaning of life?” will bring up a number of responses, both serious and not so serious. The first time I asked, Siri simply said “42.” If you ask Siri if there’s a god, the software points you in the direction of the nearest church

Amazing.

[1]: http://gizmodo.com/5848584/real-life-iphone-4s-siri-demonstr...

[2]: http://1876.voxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/iph4_scre1...

Here’s a longer conversation with Siri from Macworld: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mNcnj2l6RE

I think all the humor is a great move on Apple’s part.

That was a great move when Siri was a stand-alone app and it is an even better move now. A bag full of easter eggs that people will talk about not just on Hacker News. I think it will become (English-speaking) mainstream culture really fast.

The examples you give don't feel natural to me, they feel too precalculated. Something like wolframalpha seems really awesome when you ask it the right things, but you have to know what to ask. (In fact, one of the pages from the video looks very familiar http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moon+distance+from+eart... )

For something like Siri, it would impress me most to do mainly one thing well; to understand my context. This is especially difficult if a sentence draws on distinct subject areas. The video seems to give hope for it to be able to do this though.

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