iPhone 4S: Siri Voice Feature Attracts Glowing Reviews

Apple iPhone 4S (the 16GB version) was launched for pre-orders last Friday and recorded over 1 million pre-orders in a single day breaking the record of 600,000 set by iPhone 4. The 32 and 64 GB versions are also sold out at four sites and are only available at Sprint.

The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do, said Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.

We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S, commented Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.

Meanwhile, the new smartphone from Apple received positive reactions from technology gadget reviewers for its new voice-recognition software, faster processing speed and improved picture-taking quality, Bloomberg reported.

Perhaps, the most prominent feature is Siri - a voice-recognition feature that allows users to control their phones by talking to them. The feature will allow users to control their iPhone using just their voices. iPhone 4 already has a Voice Control system but it is very limited. The new system is supposed to recognize much more natural phrases and have a much greater tolerance for nebulous inputs.

Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing executive, called Siri the coolest feature of the new iPhone 4S.

To access Siri, users will have to hold down the home button for a few seconds and the application will launch. It works quite well, and it can do a lot of things, even more than Google's Voice Control can.

Siri helps you make calls, send text messages or e-mail, schedule meetings and reminders, make notes, search the Internet, find local businesses and get directions. Users can also get answers, find facts and even perform complex calculations just by asking.

David Pogue, the New York Times reviewer, says Siri is crazy good, transformative, category-redefining speech recognition, Bloomberg reported.

According to Bloomberg's Rich Jaroslovsky, it is vastly better than rival phones with voice commands.

The other big thing that is overhyped by Apple is the camera. The device has an eight-megapixel camera with improved optics and the larger f/2.4 aperture work together to let you take better pictures. The camera also uses advanced algorithms in iOS 5 for even more color accuracy, better white balance, and greater dynamic range. It also supports 1080p HD video recording with real-time noise reduction and video stabilization.

Coming to the processer, iPhone 4S is Apple's first A5 dual core processor smartphone, the same one used in iPad 2, which also has a new and improved graphics adapter that should provide up to 7 times the performance in games and other intensive graphics apps compared to the A4.

Sporting a high-speed download packet access (HSDPA) technology, iPhone 4S will have data download speed that is nearly twice as fast as iPhone 4.

There's a faster chip, the same one that's in iPad 2. More speed is always better, of course. But it's not like people were complaining about the previous iPhone's speed, Pogue said in New York Times Review.

iPhone 4S supports both GSM and CDMA network. It's especially great for frequent traveler.

iPhone 4S was unveiled on Oct. 4 and will be available in stores on Oct. 14. With a two-year contract, iPhone 4S costs $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model and $399 for the 64GB model. Apple-listed prices for a contract-free phone in the United States are $649 for the 16GB model, $749 for 32GB and $849 for the 64GB.