This isn't the iPhone 5. No matter how badly you wanted something slim, sleek and wedge-shaped, this isn't it. If you went ahead and got your hopes up ahead of Apple's "Let's Talk iPhone" event, hopefully you've gotten over the pangs of discontent by now, because this device pictured front and center is the iPhone 4S. It's a new spin on an old phone that will shock none, but give it half a chance, and it will still impress.
The iPhone 4S comes with a faster processor, a better camera, a smarter virtual assistant and twice the storage of its predecessor -- if you don't mind paying for it. Like the iPhone 3GS did before to the 3G, the 4S bumps the iPhone 4 down to second-class status, leaving those Apple fans who must have the best aspiring to own its decidedly familiar exterior. Apple says this is the most amazing iPhone ever. Is it? Yes, of course it is, but read on to see whether it's really worth an upgrade.
Hardware
Familiar is a good term for the exterior of the iPhone 4S. When the 4 was unveiled in the summer of 2010 it was a strikingly different design from anything else on the market -- glass on the front and back, exposed screws holding together a deliciously clean ring of stainless steel. It was kind of chunky and industrial, like a tastefully refinished factory loft -- a big contrast to the smooth and nondescript models that came before. The iPhone 4 was something truly new and, for the days and weeks after its release, just spotting one in the wild caused a sensation. It was so different that people wanted to touch and hold the thing, to see how it felt in the hand. Few are going to go out of their way to touch and hold the iPhone 4S, but that's not to say it isn't very nice to grasp. The iPhone 4 felt like a finely crafted piece of machinery and there's no doubt this one walks in those very same footsteps. Compared to your average modern Android wunderphone the 4S feels small, dense and heavy, a very different sensation than the occasionally lighter but frequently more plasticky competition. The 4S does actually have slightly more heft than the 4, but only by carefully holding one in each hand can you notice the increase from 137 grams (4.83 ounces) to 140 (4.94 ounces). Save for a few tweaks that even the most dedicated Appleista wouldn't be able to spot at a distance, the 4S is identical from the exterior. A few of the controls have been shifted by fractions of a millimeter and this uses the same exterior antenna layout as the CDMA iPhone 4 that hit Verizon earlier this year. Rather more significantly, though, how it works with those antennas has changed.
Software (Siri)
Though it comes a few days after its release, the iPhone 4S ushers in the world of iOS 5. This latest revision of Apple's mobile operating system helps to clean some of the dust off of what was starting to feel a bit dated without actually changing any fundamentals. iOS 5 introduces a slew of improvements and enhancements, some minor and some rather more major. We've already posted a particularly comprehensive iOS 5 review, so we won't blather on about it any longer here except to say it's a very solid update that will make your smartphone an even more seamless, integral part of your life.
The one thing we will
blather on about quite a bit more here is Siri, your own digital
helper. Siri is an evolution of the Siri Virtual Assistant, a spin-off
of a DARPA project called CALO. Apple bought the company in early 2010
and now that functionality is baked right into the OS. Sort of. Siri
can only be found on the iPhone 4S, a curious and seemingly arbitrary
shunning of the other iOS devices. We've heard that's due to the
processor demands required for voice recognition, but since you need an
active data connection to use Siri we have to imagine that the heavy
lifting for voice recognition is happening somewhere inside Apple's massive data center,
which would seemingly allow lower-spec devices to do the same. And,
since the iPad 2 is running the A5 at an even higher clock speed,
there's just no good reason we can think of for putting Siri exclusively
on the 4S. Let the poor girl out, we say. Should you find yourself
owning the requisite hardware to give Siri a shot, you'll probably be
pretty impressed with what she can do. Of course, "she" is a
characteristic bit of anthropomorphism that we'll apply to the same
voice you've probably heard in a half-dozen GPS devices in the past, but
still, calling her an "it" just seems a little wrong. Siri herself,
though, wouldn't mind. Ask her "Are you a man or a woman?" and her
response is a curt "I was not assigned a gender." We think she's just
playing hard to get. Siri can do a huge number of things, from sending
texts and emails to finding restaurants and getting directions from one
place to another -- things that, it must be said, could largely be done
before by voice on other devices and platforms. It's really the enhanced
ability to understand casually spoken English mixed in with the notion
of context that sets this apart. 
Let's
talk about the context bit first. Say you want to send a text to your
wife to remind her to pick up the dogs from boarding on the way home
from work. You can just say, "Tell my wife don't forget the dogs." Siri
will send your wife a message saying, "Don't forget the dogs." How does
Siri know who your wife is? Well, she doesn't at first, but she'll ask,
and once you tell her she'll remember -- until the end of time. That
context works in other situations, too, like receiving a text message
from someone, asking Siri to check your calendar, and then just saying
"Reply, I'll see you then." You don't need to say who to reply to, Siri
will remember. For the first time we feel less like we're giving stiff
commands to a device and more like we're actually having a conversation.
That said, you can still be as commanding as you like. Siri won't mind.
And then there's the other part that makes Siri good: you don't have to
remember the commands. At least, not as much as you do with Android. If
you want directions on Google Navigation you have to specifically say
"Directions to X." With Siri you can say "Get me directions to X," or
you can say "Tell me how to get to X," or even "Directions to X." It's a
minor difference but it feels more like Siri is smart enough to figure
out what you want, whereas the voice recognition elsewhere feels more
like you have to be smart enough to remember to say what it wants. (Even so, we'd certainly prefer to use the far more polished Google Navigation than IOS's Maps to get around.) 
Still,
this isn't exactly unprecedented, apps like Vlingo do similar things
elsewhere. Also, it should be noted that Siri isn't necessarily any more
accurate than other offerings. We did a side-by-side
comparison of the dictation abilities of iOS 5 vs. those built into
Android and Windows Phone and found them to be similar. Android's
dictation services, though rather less friendly than Siri and requiring a
few more taps on the display, were every bit as accurate. Windows
Phone, however, struggled to provide consistently accurate
transcriptions, often missing words and getting more complex statements
wrong. For example, the spoken text "Kurt Vonnegut lived near
Schenectady, New York," one time resulted in the message "Could I get
laid in your Schenectady New York." An interesting message that Mr.
Vonnegut would have likely approved, but wasn't exactly what we had in
mind. It's in going the other way that Siri has even more potential,
saying that you have a new message and then promptly reading it to you
-- then letting you reply by voice. The biggest issue here, though, is
that you can't have emails read to you, which means you can't fully
reply by voice. (You can do voice dictation, but you'll need to trigger
that with your fingers.) This potentially could be a boon for people who
would rather listen to their inbox than NPR on the commute home from
work, and indeed it is, but the functionality here is a little more
limited than we'd like. For example, you can tell Siri to look up
something on Wolfram Alpha, and that she'll dutifully do, but she won't
read you the response. You have to look at the phone, likely thanks to
Wolfram Alpha rendering its results as images rather than plain text.
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