I have heard the numbers…
- 4 million sold in the first weekend.
- Lines around the block at the Apple Store
- 1-2 week web delivery times due to high demand and record sales
Well 4 days in to my iPhone 4S experience, my handset is on its way back to Apple.
Why?
- Start out with atrocious battery life. Unplugging with a full charge at 9:00 am left me at 25% battery by 3:00 pm and that is with very little use. Many say the battery drain is because of location-based services like the location-aware reminders and “find my iPhone” even turning all of the iCloud-based services leaves the batter performance miserable. My old iPhone 4 ran laps around this device for battery longevity.
- Siri is down more than it is up. Trying to make use of the new, clever personal assistant Siri is an exercise in frustration too. Most times i tried to make practical use of it in the real world (middle of the business day while driving) I am greeted with “I”m sorry, I cannot connect to the network right now” or “Something’s gone wrong, can you say that again?”
- Call failures galore. AT&T clearly got hammered on this roll out because activation times on their network were north of 3 hours and call failures, even through my micro cell, were abundant.
In short, pass on this one. Coming from an Apple fan… Wait for the iPhone 5 hopefully next year.