IPhone 4s
The is a smartphone that was developed and marketed by Apple. It is the fifth generation of the iPhone, succeeding the iPhone 4 and preceding the iPhone 5. It was announced on October 4, 2011, at Apple's Cupertino campus, and was the final Apple product announced in the lifetime of former Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs, who died the following day.
Orders could be placed on October 7, 2011, and mainstream availability in retail stores began on October 14, 2011, in the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan. Sales peaked over its predecessor with more than a million sales in the first twenty-four hours of order availability and more than four million sales in the first four days of retail availability. Further worldwide rollout, including 22 additional countries on October 28, came during the next several months.
This iPhone was named "4s" where the "s" stood for Siri, an intelligent personal assistant that was initially exclusive to the 4s and later included in future Apple products. Retaining most of the external design of the iPhone 4, the 4s hosted major internal upgrades, including an upgrade to the Apple A5 chipset, and an 8-megapixel camera with 1080p video recording. It debuted with iOS 5, the fifth major version of iOS, Apple's mobile operating system, that introduced features including iCloud, iMessage, Notification Center, Reminders, and Twitter integration.
Reception to the was favorable. Reviewers noted Siri, the new camera, and processing speeds as significant advantages over the prior model. It was succeeded by the iPhone 5 as Apple's flagship smartphone on September 12, 2012. The 16 GB iPhone 4s remained on sale at a reduced price point, with the 32 and 64 GB models discontinued. The 16 GB 4s was also subsequently discontinued in September 2013 with the release of the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S and replaced with the 8 GB model which was offered free on contract in the United States.
The 4s was officially discontinued on September 9, 2014, following the announcement of the iPhone 6, although production did continue for developing markets until February 17, 2016. During the course of its lifetime, the iPhone 4s was one of the best-selling iPhones ever produced and was the first iPhone to support five major versions of iOS: iOS 5, iOS 6, iOS 7, iOS 8, and iOS 9.
The 4s is the last iPhone to have Apple's proprietary 30 pin connector, as the iPhone 5 replaced it with the all digital Lightning connector.
Production and release
As early as May 2011, some leaks had a fairly accurate description of the iPhone 4S including the name "", the Apple A5 chip, HSDPA, new camera, and Sprint carrying.The was unveiled at Apple's "Let's Talk iPhone" event on October 4, 2011, on the Apple Campus in Cupertino, California. The keynote was the first which Tim Cook gave since the Verizon keynote earlier in the year. It was also Cook's first launch without Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, whose health was deteriorating, and he died the day after the announcement of the. Tim Carmody of Wired praised Cook for focusing on company achievements, calling him a "global business thinker" and a "taskmaster".
At the "Let's Talk iPhone" event held by Apple on October 4, 2011, Mike Capps demonstrated Epic Games' Infinity Blade II, the sequel to Infinity Blade, on an. Capps boasted that the game uses Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and features the same graphic techniques used in the Xbox 360 game Gears of War 3.
Speculation about Apple's next generation smartphone, including various specifications and a predicted name "iPhone 5", had been widespread in the time preceding its debut. After the was announced, it was considered by some media to be a disappointment, due to the expected release of an iPhone 5.
There were no external differences between the iPhone 4 CDMA model and the, with the exception of a SIM card slot on the. All changes were internal.
On September 10, 2013, the iPhone 4S name was re-stylised as iPhone 4s, using a lower case 's' to reflect the names of the newly announced iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. This was unusual for Apple as an upper case 'S' had been used since the introduction of the iPhone 3GS in 2009.
On September 9, 2014, the iPhone 4s was officially discontinued following the reveal of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. However, 4s production did continue for developing markets until February 17, 2016.
On September 13, 2016, following the release of iOS 10, Apple dropped support for the iPhone 4s, making iOS 9 the last major iOS version available for the device.
Software
The, like other iPhones, runs iOS, Apple's mobile operating system. The user interface of iOS is based on the concept of direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures. Interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. The response to user input is immediate and provides a fluid interface. Interaction with the OS includes gestures such as swipe, tap, pinch, and reverse pinch, all of which have specific definitions within the context of the iOS operating system and its multi-touch interface.Internal accelerometers are used by some applications to respond to shaking the device or rotating it in three dimensions.
The iPhone 4s was first shipped with iOS 5.0, which was released on October 12, 2011, two days before the release of the device. As of December 2024, the device can be updated to iOS 9.
It can act as a hotspot, sharing its internet connection over WiFi, Bluetooth, or USB, and also accesses the App Store, a digital application distribution platform for iOS developed and maintained by Apple. The service allows users to browse and download applications from the iTunes Store that were developed with Xcode and the iOS SDK and were published through Apple.
The iPhone 4s can play music, movies, television shows, ebooks, audiobooks, and podcasts and can sort its media library by songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists, genres, composers, podcasts, audiobooks, and compilations. Options are always presented alphabetically, except in playlists, which retain their order from iTunes. The iPhone 4s uses a large font that allows users plenty of room to touch their selection. Users can rotate their device horizontally to landscape mode to access Cover Flow. Like on iTunes, this feature shows the different album covers in a scroll-through its photograph library. Scrolling is achieved by swiping a finger across the screen. Alternatively, headset controls can be used to pause, play, skip, and repeat tracks. On the 4s, the volume can be changed with the included Apple Earphones, and the Voice Control feature can be used to identify a track, play songs in a playlist or by a specific artist, or create a Genius playlist.
The introduced a new automated voice control system called Siri, that allows the user to give the iPhone commands, which it can execute and respond to. For example, iPhone commands such as "What is the weather going to be like?" will generate a response such as "The weather is to be cloudy and rainy and drop to 54 degrees today." These commands can vary greatly and control almost every application of the smartphone. The commands given do not have to be specific and can be used with natural language. Siri can be accessed by holding down the home button for a short amount of time. An impact of Siri, as shown by Apple video messages, is that it is much easier for people to use device functions while driving, exercising, or when they have their hands full. It also means people with trouble reading, seeing, or typing can access the smartphone more easily.
On the, texting can be aided by the voice assistant, which allows speech-to-text. In addition to regular texting, messaging on the is supported by iMessage, a specialized instant messaging program and service that allows unlimited texting to other Apple iOS 5 products. This supports the inclusion of media in text messages, integration with the device's voice-controlled software assistant, and read receipts for sent messages. Input to the computer comes from a keyboard displayed on the multi-touch screen or by voice-to-text by speaking into the microphone. Entered text is supported by predictive and suggestion software as well as a spell-checker, that includes many regional dialects such as Swiss spoken French.
At the announcement, plans were in place for the to support many languages. Different features have different language requirements, such as keyboards compared to the word predictor and spell-checker, which needs a large dictionary of words. Language support is related to the iOS 5 operating system that the device launched with, although not always. The Siri digital assistant supported French, English, and German at launch. Since it uses a software-based keyboard supported by the multi-touch display, it can support many different keyboard layouts without having to change physically. The can display different languages and scripts at the same time.
On September 19, 2012, iOS 6 was released to the iPhone 4s among other compatible iOS devices as an over the air upgrade package. According to Apple the update contained 200 new features and tweaks, which included a new maps app, Facebook integration, and Passbook, an application that allows users to store their coupons, boarding passes, and tickets digitally. On September 18, 2013, Apple released iOS 7, although some features that were released to newer devices such as AirDrop and CarPlay were not supported on the iPhone 4s. The iPhone 4s can also run iOS 8, which was released on September 17, 2014. Due to the aged hardware, the iPhone 4S was not compatible with the Apple Watch.
On June 8, 2015, Apple announced at the WWDC that the iPhone 4s would support iOS 9. This makes it the first iPhone to support five major versions of iOS, and the second iOS device to support five major versions, after the iPad 2. On December 22, 2015, Apple faced a class action lawsuit alleging that they had knowingly slowed down iPhone 4s devices with iOS 9. The lawsuit was settled in 2022.
On June 13, 2016, Apple announced that the iPhone 4s would not support iOS 10 due to hardware limitations.
On July 22, 2019, Apple released iOS 9.3.6 for the iPhone 4s to fix issues caused by the GPS week number rollover. The issues would impact the accuracy of GPS location and set the device's date and time to an incorrect value, preventing connection to HTTPS servers and, consequently, Apple's servers for activation, iCloud and the iTunes and App stores.