The iPhone 4S launched last week and within just a few days, 4 million of them were sold. As usual, iSuppli has decided to take a look at what components are used and then estimate the cost of building each device. The cost for each 16GB model was estimated to be $188 although this doesn’t include the build cost of $8 per item.
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iPhone 4S Location Gets GLONASS Support Alongside GPS
October 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Looking over the specs page of the iPhone 4S you might have noticed that as well as supporting GPS, the new smartphone also has support for GLONASS. GLONASS (meaning GLObalnaya NAvigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema) is Russias answer to the US GPS system. The project started as far back as 1976 and is essentially a different system to track you around the globe. At the moment GLONASS isn’t active although the last satellite was sent in to space very recently.
iPhone 4S Battery Problems – Possible Solutions
October 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment
iPhone 4S users seem to be getting a little upset about the battery not lasting as long as expected. In most cases, users are reporting that the iPhone 4S has a worse battery life than the iPhone 4.
I have a mixed experience with the iPhone 4S compared to the iPhone 4 running iOS 5. Both do really well or both can perform bad depending on what features are used. It’s hard to confirm if this is all hardware related or if Apple just needs to tweak iOS 5 a little more to be more effective at getting the information it needs for location based reminders and iMessage etc… Below is a list of new features that seem to cause the battery to die.
Using Siri to Add Tasks to Remember The Milk and OmniFocus
October 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment
iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S lacks an API that allows developers to integrate with Siri, we assume this will happen when Siri is taken out of Beta, but this restriction hasn’t prevented some smart ways of getting data in to apps that you want to use with voice control.
One of these is the Remember the Milk app which is used for task management. Siri by default does not speak to Remember the Milk but thanks to some smart ideas the developers can now let you add a reminder to Remember the Milk.
A6 Processor for iPhone 5 and iPad 3 Could be From Samsung
October 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment
When Apple [AAPL] releases its next generation iPad we could be seeing an A6 processor inside that has been built by Samsung. Samsung currently make the processors for iOS based devices (the older A4 chip and the newer A5 chip). It is now believed that they will be making the next generation chip for next years devices.
iPhone 4S Sales Reach 4 Million in First Weekend
October 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Although Apple [AAPL] didn’t impress some people with the launch of the iPhone 4S (a lot were expecting a different design and a new name of the iPhone 5), it seems that this hasn’t caused problems for sales in any noticeable way as the company has now announced that 4 million units were sold within the first weekend of launch.
Maps and Local Search for Siri Coming in 2012
October 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment
One of the big let downs of the iPhone 4S launch was that for those of you out of the US, Siri has even more limited capabilities. In our Siri Review we noted that Apple [AAPL] had pulled out support for maps, directions and business searches. Although we have been told it’s coming, we hadn’t been told if that would be weeks or months. It turns out that it’s still several months away:
Maps and local search support will be available in additional countries in 2012.
Siri Ported to the iPhone 4 – Doesn’t Quite Work Yet
October 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A lot of iPhone 4 users want to get Siri but unfortunately Apple [AAPL] has decided against offering it and has instead made it iPhone 4S only. We don’t know the reason for this as it could be related to the iPhone 4 not quite having enough power or that it’s some other hardware tweak that we don’t know about. It could also be a sales thing so that the 4S has another slight edge against the older versions.
Anyway, a developer has managed to port the Siri interface on to the iPhone 4. The downside is that it doesn’t quite work yet as the interface isn’t talking with the Apple servers yet. Siri requires a connection to the servers at Apple so that your voice records can be stored and used to improve the service. It appears that Apple isn’t authenticating the use of Siri on the iPhone 4 and hence, not allowing it to function fully.
iPhone 4S Siri Review
October 14, 2011 by 2 Comments
We’ve been busy testing Siri for the iPhone 4S today to see if it works as advertised and also look at how it can be improved. What we wont touch on in this review is iOS 5 or the hardware in general. We’ll get on to those in the next few days after having more time testing the device and OS. On to the review…
Siri is a personal assistant for the iPhone 4S that goes beyond responding to simple commands. Siri understands context and allows you to speak in natural language to ask your phone to do things such as read my text message, remind me to do this, email this person, check the weather amongst several other things. When first getting the iPhone 4S you need to enable Siri and preferably allow it to use your current location as this comes in handy with some of the options you can set. On the settings screen there are just a handful of options which allow you to select who you are, which country you are from (currently 5 options available) and if you want Siri to activate when holding the phone to your ear. When these are set, you’re ready to go.
MP3 Store Could be Opened by Google Music
October 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Google could be getting more closely involved in music from what we have read today. From what we understand, Google [GOOG] is currently signing deals with major record labels and when the contracts are complete, an MP3 store could be opened to compete with the likes of the iTunes store as well as Amazon store.
iPhone 4S Has 512MB of RAM
October 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment
We already heard rumblings of the iPhone 4S having just 512MB of RAM and this has now been confirmed by both iFixit who took the iPhone 4S apart yesterday and by Anandtech who did some research on the part numbers found on the chips found inside.
The possible reasons for Apple choosing to use a lower amount of RAM are likely to do with power consumption. The more RAM the more cells that need updating.
iPhone 4S Teardown Begins
October 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment
iFixit now has an iPhone 4S and has begun taking it apart to check and confirm exactly what is inside of it. We’ve seen various official pictures from Apple that show the A5 processor and battery but other than that we don’t know the exact chips which should reveal a few more details about the inner workings of the device.
