iPhone 4S: We’re past looks now, aren’t we?

We all heard (or read) the new announcement from Apple: More watch faces for the iPod Nano. SWEET! Oh wait, iPhone. Right. Onward.

Apple surprised everyone by saying that they didn’t change the look of the iPhone, but rather the internals. Why should we be surprised? As KaiserMachead points out, there’s only been one major overhaul on looks in 4 years. But aren’t we past that? It’s still the prettiest phone on the market, not to mention the prettiest phone you’ll have to wrap in a case. We’re geeks, nerds and hardware freaks. Why doesn’t anyone really like what they’ve done?

They’ve upgraded the processor from the A4 single core to the A5 dual core (should have seen this coming). Awesome! More power! They’ve boosted the GPU to dual-core as well. This means they know you want smooth, awesome games in your hand. I don’t know how that equals 7x the power, but sure, ok. It’s a good gaming device. They haven’t upgraded the display, but they don’t need to. It’s already really crisp.

What else did they do? Oh, just upgrade the antenna to support CDMA (EV-DO RevA) and GSM (HSPA+), meaning you can buy it on a CDMA carrier, but still have a world phone. So now instead of two different models of the iPhone 4 to keep track of, it’s the iPhone 4S, just activated for your carrier. I guess that’s impressive. Not to mention smart. They don’t want to bifurcate their product line. I’m sure having two different colors is already giving somebody fits. That’s 1 supply line, not two. Smart.

The camera. Oh, the camera. They’ve added full 1080p video support (thanks to the processor upgrade, no doubt), as well as a 8MP sensor with a lens that can go up to F2.4. More Bokeh for all! Also, it lets in a lot more light. Coupled with more infrared sensing ability, this means you’ll get brighter pictures in low-light, like bars or parties. They’ve also smoked past the competition in terms of speed to first shot, as well as shot-to-shot speed. There might be a slight trade-off between review time and “Gotta take the next picture, kthxbai” but it’s good to see they’ve focused on one of the major uses of the modern smartphone: pictures.

What are you gonna do with that picture? Whatever you want, of course. They’ve upped the battery life. To claim ridiculous numbers. 40 hours of music playback? 9 hours of Wi-Fi web surfing? Wowsers. That’s awesome.

Then there’s Siri, the magical, voice command system. Now you no longer have to touch your touchscreen phone. At least this will help with text grammar. That is, until DamnYouSiri.com goes live. Android and WP7 both have good voice support, and Apple decided to go past the logical into the realm of Sci-Fi. At least, that’s how they sell it.

So we have a phone with a good processor, great camera, all-in-one antenna, killer battery, and a creepy talking feature. It’s good. If you want the top of the line in terms of phones, it’s up there. There are a few comparison sheets out there, and the iPhone 4s looks pretty solid. Ron’s gonna get one, we know it. So tell us when.