Should you upgrade from whatever you have now to an iPhone 4S? The answer to that depends entirely on what exactly you have now, or whether any of the features of iPhone 4S are compelling enough to makes it worth upgrading regardless of what you have now.
Read on for the full breakdown.
If you’re currently using an original iPhone, iPhone 3G, or iPhone 3GS than your contract has likely expired and you can get an iPhone 4S at full, subsidize price. You can also get an iPhone 4S on Verizon or Sprint in the US, which wasn’t an option for any of the pre-iPhone 4S models.
The improvements to iPhone 4S for iPhone 3GS owners are significant. For iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G owners, they’re stratospheric. Retina display, a much better camera that shoots HD video, silky smooth multitasking, incredible gaming power, FaceTime video calling, Siri voice control — the list goes on and on.
Also, you get to keep your apps, you maintain easy access to any iTunes music, TV shows, and movies you might have bought, and your cables stay compatible.
iPhone 4S is almost a no-brainer update from those early iPhone models.
If you’re currently rocking an Phone 4, the answer isn’t as easy. You’re probably still on contract with the carrier, so you may not be able to get the fully subsidized price unless you qualify for an early upgrade or you lean on them and their retention departments. There’s also not a huge difference in functionality — more speed, a better camera, Siri voice control, availability on Sprint, and world-phone CDMA roaming being the major differentiators.
iPhone 4S is not a compelling upgrade for most iPhone 4 owners unless you really want or need a specific new feature.
If your current phone of choice runs Android, Windows Phone, or webOS or is a BlackBerry, here’s where it gets tricky. If you’re not on contract, it’s easier. If you are, you need to weigh the pros and cons and see if the features you get outweigh the penalties you’ll have to pay.
That said, you get the most powerful web browser on mobile, the biggest app ecosystem, the least carrier-controlled experience (no crapware, no feature lockouts, no random casing changes) and a product that invented the “just works” cliché.
If you’ve only been using another platform because you were waiting for the 2011 iPhone on your choice of carrier — go get it.
If you like your current platform but are curious or considering the jump to iPhone 4S, wait until you can try one at the store and really get a feel for it.
Yes. Do it now.
(If you’re really hard up for up-front cash, consider a $99 iPhone 4 or free iPhone 3GS, but if you can scrape together the $199+ for an iPhone 4S, considering the contract will cost you ~$2000+ over two years, it’s not really much of a savings.)
If you’re still not sure, hit up our iPhone 4S Forums to get the help you need to make up your mind.
If there is anything that we can learn from the death of Steve Jobs it’s that we need to make sure we live for the moment and do as much as we can with the time we are given. Though Steve is no longer with us, his legacy will carry on. I did not expect to be as affected by his passing as I have been. There is something that made me feel secure with having Steve at Apple, and his spirit can not be replaced.
There isn’t much I could say about Steve’s influence on the world that hasn’t been said better already. I wasn’t expecting to be as impacted by his passing as I found myself last night and again this morning. But I was, and I started to think about why I felt the way I did. I came to the conclusion that everything I do today – from the actual work I do on a daily basis, to the way I think about the quality of what we create, to the places I want us to go as a company – has in some perceivable way been shaped by Steve. A child of the 80s, I loved Macs, and when I was old enough to afford my own, it was around the same time he came back to Apple and began to reshape the face of the company. Since that point, I’ve watched as his vision brought new life not only to Apple, but to the entire technology industry. My formative young adult years were spent in awe of the places he was taking us, and with each release, we inched closer toward a better way of doing things. There were hiccups along the way, stops and starts, but the vision always persevered in spite of everything. Now, with the mobile landscape looking the way it does, thinking back to those early machines and the original Macintosh’s goal of bringing computing to everyone, it’s clear that he succeeded in that intention. Every single day, the good things he wanted us to feel as we use our technology touch my life in quietly profound ways. And every single day forward, I will pause and think about how compromise was not a part of that plan. Steve’s guiding principle was to do great things, and while we don’t always succeed at that, neither did he – and it’s the journey (and the willingness to keep pushing forward) that really matters anyway. I will genuinely miss him, and I thank him for everything he did in the name of the user.
I’ve immersed myself in technology ever since I can remember. I was always fascinated by the way things work and how things could be better. Steve Jobs understood that things can “always” be better. He was a visionary and his own worst critic. I always admired that in him. Back in my college days I remember seeing the Stanford Commencement speech on the internet. One quote stuck with me from then until now – 
As much as we like to poke at Apple whenever we get the chance on CrackBerry, Steve Jobs was an amazing visionary and inspiring leader who made a significant impact upon the world in which we live. Our deepest sympathies go out to his family and loved ones. 
Say what you will about Steve Jobs… whether you loved him or hated him, it is undeniable of the impact he had on our modern society. His return to Apple marked a new era of design and functionality the rest of the industry wished they could capture and often tried to replicate. Sure he was known to fanboys as the savior and to the haters as the devil but his business savvy and cutthroat business decisions created an empire. You will always see his true friends speak dearly of him and that is what strikes me most. He was a guy who was doing a job that was fueled on his dreams and imagination; they might have been absurd to conventional thinking and against every fabric of sound business models, yet, he still prevailed on top of it all. I offer his family and friends my condolences during this hard time. Having lost my mother at 47 from cancer, the thing that helped me through it all was remembering her during the strongest periods of her life and always keeping that in my heart. Steve, thank you for your innovations that keep pushing our world closer together through technology.
Explaining to my 5-year-old daughter what I was watching on TV (and, Jesus H. Christ is CNN horrible), Mia, who uses an old iPhone 3G as an iPod, asks me:
Between last night and today, I have heard so many people state what Steve Jobs meant to them and their lives and it has truly been amazing. I’ve always recognized that we all live and we all die but I never realized the passing of Steve Jobs would have this much affect on myself. I work on a MacBook Pro all day long, I write about iPhones and iPads often and much of my livelihood as I know it — is because of the products him and the folks at Apple have created. Steve Jobs was simply put.. amazing. I encourage you all to donate to your local Cancer society.
It’s difficult to find the right words to describe some of the emotions that I’ve been overwhelmed with since learning of Steve Job’s passing. Feelings of sadness, nostalgia, deep inspiration and happiness all come to the surface when watching some of Steve’s greatest moments on stage. He had such a way about him. That all-too-magical reality distortion field. I don’t believe we will have another opportunity to see a man as great as Steve Jobs emerge within our lifetimes. 
My first computer was an Apple II. My first website was created on the classic Mac OS. Day in and day out, my work, my play, and my life is enabled by Macs and iPhones and iPads and the apps they make possible. Steve Jobs inspired and informed all of that. He is indelibly and inexorably at the heart of modern technology.
For today only, the 
