Review: It's not an iPhone 5, but so what?

The 4S costs $199 to $399, depending on storage space. It requires a two-year service contract with Verizon Wireless, Sprint or AT&T.

Are we still in Japan, right? They did not even bother to cut this part, or to actually look for the information.

This seems more like an advert than a genuine review.

I would love to see its monthly plan drop a few thousand.

Just got back from SOftBank to trade in my 3Gs. The plan is similar to what I have but the cost will still be almost the same at about ¥5700 a month. So much for competition.

@ John Becker - fair point! Myself - I'd rather be a travel writer...now there's a way to spend your working hours...

I bought a 2nd generation iPod touch when they first came out and that peaked my interest in the cell phones they were offering, but since I had a decent working cell phone already I saw no need to change. Also, as one poster already pointed out the cost of owning a smartphone is considerably higher. Difficult to justify paying 8000 yen per month when I'm currently happy with the white plan.

After seeing the ads for the iPhone 4s, however, I really want to take a look at it! Particularly for the Siri feature. I'm most interested in hearing reviews from owners who have already given it a test drive though. The concept has been around for awhile, but the implementation has always been poor at best. If Siri works as advertised, it will be a pretty big breakthrough with cell phones.

With due respect - the author needs to join a gym or take up a hobby. Spending all your non-working hours playing with a hand-held gadget is kind of, umm, sad.

I would agree, unless the author's job involves reviewing cell phones. Which it apparently does. So those hours spent "playing with a hand-held gadget" are working hours.

I have a feeling that Siri might wind up being little more than a novelty that people play with for a few days and then stop using. If I'm wrong about that, kudos to Apple - that really is a step forward.

With location services on and using a combination of Wi-Fi and 3G cellular service, I got about six hours of copious texting, websurfing, video-watching and calling out of the 4S.

With due respect - the author needs to join a gym or take up a hobby. Spending all your non-working hours playing with a hand-held gadget is kind of, umm, sad.

Smorkian; Softbank reckon they is the cheapest. I went last week to their shop as i have a 3GS which has a broken back light, I had 4 months left on contrct but they cancelled contract for free and are giving me a 4G whne in stock and a new contract whoch is cheaper overall. I don't know about people wanting contract from fresh but AU one seems a lot more pricey.

I'll update on my plan later this week........

The 4S costs $199 to $399, depending on storage space. It requires a two-year service contract with Verizon Wireless, Sprint or AT&T.

Not a chance of getting a Japan-based review? I couldn't possibly care less about Verizon, Sprint, AT&T or the US dollar. How does it work in Japan? What are AU and Softbank selling them at? Any specific Japan features? How does it compare with other models on the Japanese market including Japan-specific models?

This is the 7th article about the iPhone this week...are the newspapers running out of stories or something? No company has had as much free publicity for an update since eh.. since nothing .

Poor one sided review. Siri requires a connection to the Internet to work it doesn't work offline, it requires a connection to online servers. It has issues with older wifi routers and syncing icloud. It is still a nice smartphone. but apple need to make the screen bigger, that you will see on the iphone 5, they will almost certainly bump the screen to at last 4 inches on that. The glass back will definitely be gone from the iphone 5 , that was poor move. Its still too heavy aswell , the 5 needs to be much lighter. Its great but far from perfect.

As long as customers are tied to these expensive phone plans, I will never buy a smartphone. Just have a simple prepaid one which includes the usual mp3 player, camera and tv, and cost less than 4000 yen. What I really want is an ipod touch with radio and gps. I have a feeling this will never happen. Samsung galaxy player wifi5 looks promising - just have to buy it overseas.

I have one and it is pretty interesting.......I can't imagine Siri becoming my best friend but it is a big advance on the voice recognition that is out there

Sorry, nothing new here, I'm not buying a new phone for voice activation or a faster CPU, this isn't a computer and shouldn't be sold like one.

Was this article proofread? It reads so badly............

I imagine the author spends more time playing with his 'gadgets' than learning to write!

I checked it out I'm still happy with my iphone4 so i think ill just wait for the 5 to come out. whats the point for upgrading just for a camera