I'm not upgrading from my Iphone 4 but I think the features sound cool enough that I would easily shell out an extra $100 to get the 4s over the 4 if I had neither.
I think it's likely driven by their persistent need to have a "one-size-fits-all" solution for the sake of simplicity. As it is, 4G networks are highly fragmented at the moment -- Sprint WiMAX, Verizon LTE, AT&T LTE all using different bands/modulations. There's probably not enough space to cram all those radios into the device, and even if there was, it would eat into their precious profit margins, and there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, the only reason why the iPhone 4S is a world phone now is because Qualcomm finally released a single chip CDMA/GSM solution (the same one that was supposed to debut in the ill-fated Pre3, among others). In the end, it's about profit margins, and Apple feels like unlike other manufacturers, they can afford to forgo 4G and still make the money they want to make, even if everybody is all about 4G these days.
I agree, I also think it has something to do with battery life. The current LTE chips aren't that power friendly and probably didn't fit Apple's standards. They will definitely get better soon but not in time for this device. I fully expect the next iPhone to have LTE support (Verizon, at&t, and possibly Sprint). If it didn't, I'd be surprised lol.
The iPhone 5 with LTE may not be here until late 2012 or mid-2013. http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111005PR200.html. I think this is risky for Apple.
Yeah, the battery life thing is overblown. My Epic 4G Touch manages to get great battery life even with 4G left on. Apple cannot claim that their engineers aren't competent enough to accomplish the same thing. It's been over a year since we got into this business -- the technology HAS matured a bit. It's all about profit margins, and Apple is starting to do the unthinkable: turn into the Toyota of the mobile phone industry.
Really? Yesterday I disconnected my charger at 8 AM (full battery) and by 12:30 PM it gave me the low battery alert. I had 3G on the whole time, but never actually used it. Calls and texts were minimal. Oh and once it hits low battery, I'll have like 30 minutes max before it completely dies. And yes, all the supposedly awesome features of the phone are turned off (brightness low, animations off, etc).
Battery life is always a big deal. Often the biggest concern of most users. And if it isn't, it becomes one...as soon as you start using something with worse battery life than you had before.
That's not normal. Do you have some abnormal battery draining app running in the background or something? For reference, I have an Exchange ActiveSync account, a Gmail account, Facebook, twitter, news, weather and stock market widgets running and I still don't get anywhere near that level of battery drain. I leave all my radios and features on - automatic brightness, bluetooth, GPS etc.
Must be a rogue app. Go to Menu>Settings> About Phone > Battery Usage That will tell you what's consuming battery, sometime this reporting isn't accurate though. Download Watchdog Task Manager Lite (This is not a task killer, do not use task killers btw) and it will help you determine what is consuming CPU usage.
Have they given any indication as to when iPhone 4 will be available on Sprint? Will it differ from the 4S release date?
Yeah hate task killers. My phone (Atrix) came with a task killer and requires root to get rid of it smh ugh. I am not against rooting it (my previous phone was rooted and I used to fuc around with different ROMs/stuff) but too lazy to sit down, read the procedure and then figure out how to do it on a Linux computer (especially since the procedure to unlock the bootloader seems daunting to me as I have never had to do something like that before, don't have to do it, but if I am going to root, might as well).
I had a Sprint phone with Wi-max (Epic 4G) and you are correct about Wi-max having decent battery life, but as far as Verizon LTE goes, I've owned an HTC Thunderbolt, Droid Charge, and LG Revolution and while I got crazy battery life by rooting my phones, installing SetCPU with correct profiles, used alternative kernels and modified the file system (Converted RFS TO Ext4), I don't think the average consumer would like the battery life of a STOCK LTE device. To the user who mentioned the Bionic, I personally feel that the best battery life out of the box goes to the Samsung Droid Charge. Multiple factors can contribute to battery loss though, apps, low signal area (dBM wise) , rogue apps, Microsoft Exchange accounts (I use 2) , and syncing frequency of certain social apps. Reason I think battery life has something to do with it is because if I'm correct, the iPhone uses a 1400mah battery. You're going to need something bigger than that and the phone is small itself. Which also goes back to you saying the phone doesn't have room for more radios, in which I agree. Qualcomm might be making decent chips to help with the power solution, but battery technology hasn't really evolved as it should have.
Don't get a 4. Once they stop supporting the 4 OS wise and once many crazy apps/games are made to utilize the dual-core processor, you will regret it.
Pete's Motorola Root Tools is your friend, but your'e going to need a Windows machine for it. Just use VirtualBox and attempt to do it via the Win 8 developer preview since it doesn't require a Windows activation key.
Trust me, I'll be plenty happy with a 4 for the next two years. I don't make harsh demands of my cell phone. As long as they don't f*** the OS up royally like they did with the upgrade to iOS on the 3G series, everything will be fine. I can't ever imagine things going that poorly again. And the next time they do a serious reboot of iOS is a pretty long ways away, but the drop off from the iphone 4 to the iphone 5 probably won't be nearly as drastic as it was for the iphone 3 to iphone 4. So I'm not too worried about them creating an OS that completely cripples the phone.
