Edible Apple

Apple didn’t introduce an iPhone 5 today, but they did unveil an iPhone 4S with enough features to position it as an alluring upgrade for current iPhone 4 users.

As rumored, the upcoming iPhone 4S – which is slated for release on October 14th – will be a worldmode phone, meaning that it will run on both CDMA and GSM networks right out of the box. Feature wise, many of the expected talking points were mentioned.

Specifically, the iPhone 4S includes an A5 processor that reviewers described as being much zippier than the iPhone 4. Camera wise, Apple really stepped up its game and delivered an 8 megapixel camera that Apple boasted houses the most advanced optics out of any other phone on the market. Some of the details include a larger f/2.4 aperture, an improved backside illumination sensor, better auto white balance, face detection, and reduced motion blur.

“The custom lens uses five precision elements to shape incoming light,” Apple writes on its website, “which makes the entire image sharper. The larger f/2.4 aperture lets in more light, so photos look brighter. And the advanced hybrid infrared filter keeps out harmful IR light for more accurate and uniform colors.”

And speaking of cameras, the iPhone 4S also shoots video in 1080p – remarkable given how expensive HD cameras were just 4 years ago.

Battery life is also improved in the iPhone 4S, despite housing a more powerful processor. The iPhone 4S delivers 8 hours of talk time on 3G and 14 hours of talk time on 2G. Browsing via 3G yields 6 hours of battery life while browsing the web on Wi-Fi nets you up to nine hours of battery life. Very impressive.

Other iPhone 4S features include an improved antenna and, of course, Siri, Apple’s new voice recognition technology which we’ll profile in a subsequent post.

Until then, note that the iPhone 4S will be available in 3 capacities – 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB that will be priced at $199, $299, and $399 respectively.