Apple officially began taking pre-orders for the iPhone 4S via its online store at around 12:45 a.m. PDT (3:45 a.m. EDT) on Friday morning. Users eligible for an upgrade can place their order now, and shipments will begin arriving at customer doorsteps next Friday, Oct. 14. Pre-orders are began earlier at around 12 a.m. PDT at Sprint, and Verizon‘s online stores, while AT&T lagged behind, and still hadn’t begun offering orders as of this writing.
The iPhone 4S is available in 16, 32 and 64 GB capacities in either white or black, for $ 199, $ 299 or $ 399 respectively on contract when you sign up for a new, two-year agreement in the U.S. It’s also available unlocked direct from Apple in some countries, like Canada, beginning at $ 649. An unlocked version will be available in the U.S. beginning in November.
The 4S improves on its predecessor with a dual-core A5 processor, dual-core graphics processing, a new dual-mode (GSM and CDMA) antenna that can reach up to 14.4 Mbps on HSDPA networks, and an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with improved sensor technology and full, 1080p HD video capture.
Maybe the most significant improvement from an end-user perspective is the addition of Siri, Apple’s voice-activated personal digital assistant, which can do things like set appointments, compose text messages and check the weather, all in response to natural language queries like “Will I need my raincoat this weekend?” The iPhone 4S also comes with iOS 5 pre-installed, Apple’s latest mobile operating system software, which will be available for other eligible device owners Oct. 12.
Let us know if you decided to pre-order the iPhone 4S, and if so, what you’re looking forward to most about it
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