Taking the Punge with iPhone 4S

I've made my choice.

On impulse, I have taken the plunge with iPhone 4S.

I did not pre-order as millions did. I did not get up early and stand in line.

Nope. I got home from work Friday evening at 5:30. I ate dinner. I decided to drop by McDonalds for a sweet iced tea, and there was the Verizon store.

On a whim, I decided to go inside and see how long it would take receive delivery of an iPhone on order. Of course they'd have sold out by now.

But to my surprise, they still had phones in stock. It was 6:05 p.m  After picking the white 32GB model, I was out the door with within 30 minutes (it took a little longer than expected to transfer my contacts).

All I can say is, "Wow, what a great phone."  It was definitely one of the smoothest upgrades I've encountered...and I've upgraded many times (Let's face it, my Verizon buddy Kailyn knows me by name! :-) )

After bringing the phone home and doing an initial tether sync with my Macbook Pro, I was set to go.

Super Speed
So far, this phone is FAST. It is faster and smoother than any smartphone I have ever owned. My wife has an iPhone 4 and this phone is noticeably smoother and faster than hers.

Camera
The camera on the phone produces super fine pictures. I'll take some video and share soon.

Battery
The battery life blows my Samsung Fascinate away. The Fascinate with Froyo was a power suck. You could watch the battery charge go down as soon as you turn on GPS or BlueTooth. Not so with the iPhone 4S. I'll keep you posted on battery life.

Siri
The "cool" factor for iPhone 4S is Siri. Like the demonstrations and the reviews, Siri is pretty convenient to check the weather or to find a nearby restaurant. But beyond that, I haven't found additional uses. I hope that changes over time.  I didn't buy the phone for Siri, and I'm glad I didn't because it feels kind of overblown.

Twitter Integration
The other thing I want to explore a little bit more is the "deep Twitter" integration built into iPhone's iOS5. I own an iPad, and iPad2 and a MacBook Pro. So far, I'm not seeing the value of the "deep Twitter integration", but I'm willing to give it time.

Retina Display
The Retina display on iPhone 4s (like iPhone 4) is spectacular. I was reading a book on the Kindle app while waiting to get my hair cut this morning and the letters on the screen were as rich and clear as on my wife's Kindle app. When the iPad get's Retina display, it will be like going from regular to HD TV.

Phone Call Quality
I've made a few brief phone calls on the iPhone 4S. Funny, you don't hear much about phone call quality in the reviews. It's OK, but I'll have to admit that the Fascinate is on par, maybe better. The iPhone 4S has a better speaker phone than the Fascinate.

Speakers
The speakers built in to iPhone 4S provide rich sound. They are located on the bottom of the phone and it actually has better sound quality than the iPad 2. I don't like the speaker on the back of the beveled side of the iPad 2. You have to cup your hand around the speaker or set it next to a solid backdrop to get rich sound while watching the screen (but that's a different review, right?).

My one bit of advice for anyone considering a purchase of the iPhone 4S: if you can afford it, go for the 32GB version. My experience with iPod Touch, and iPad is that 16GB is just not enough when you load apps, video, music and photos together. Go bigger. You will be disappointed if you don't.

So far so good on iPhone 4S. I'm simply delighted by the speed and responsiveness of the device. I'm also delighted to be entirely on the Apple platform with my devices. iCloud and wireless synching seem to be very natural. More on both of these coming soon.

Update: Here are some pictures I took with the iPhone 4S camera: