Well, we finally broke down and upgraded our iPhone 3gS and there are many impressive things about iOS 5 on the iPhone 3gS. Yet, there is something missing. We couldn’t quite place our hand on it but we figured we would break it down piece by piece.
While the introduction to iCloud was nice and simple, allowing us at the end to simply not use it if we so desired, it was sort of, shall we say, commanding in the way the introduction took over the iPhone and would not let us do much else until we worked through the iCloud signup. This was a bit of a downer since we really weren’t wanting to share our personal data with the iCloud since we already have it backed up to our Mac and other external hard drives. But we worked through the introduction anyways and still were feeling impressed in spite of the authoritarian methods.
Once we got our phone back to a useable page, we found half our applications were not loaded. However, this was all being rectified in the back ground by iTunes as we worked. Apps continually appeared on our phone. This though was problematic in itself as we have spent the last year cleaning up our App order on the iPhone and nothing was in the order we put it in. Big time minus for iOS 5.
Then we looked for Siri. Bad news for those folks using the iPhone 3gS and the iPhone 4. There will be no Siri for you. Even the old Siri application now just starts and stops. Apple has made sure that you have to upgrade to the iPhone 4S in order to get the Siri Application. Apple obviously has made this the real reason to upgrade to the iPhone 4S. Alas, this is not the only reason though but it is a nice one.
The real reasons to upgrade is a three-fold whack to the noggin that really puts the iPhone 4S in a class by itself. One is the 8 mega-pixel camera. I hate carrying multiple cameras but this is a great upgrade which eliminates this issue. It is the one thing my poor measly 3gS does not have. One the 3gS, it barely has 1.3 mega-pixel camera capability and the photographs are horrific when compared to those of the iPhone 4S.
The second reason to upgrade is the high definition camera that comes built into the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 3gS barely hopes to take video, the iPhone 4 had bad-tv type video and finally, the iPhone 4S has the video that we all long for in all of our pockets.
The last and probably the greatest reason for me to get the iPhone 4S is the 64gb memory. My poor 32gb iPhone 3gS is always fairly full and after a person loads 20gb of music (only 100 cd’s or so), then there isn’t much room for anything else that one would want to put on there. Especially with the good apps taking up 250mb per app these days. (Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 is 241mb).
All in all, the upgrade went well and I really have no major complaints about the iPhone 3gS with iOS 5 but then when one desires the latest and greatest, it is hard to beat good old fashioned desire. And that, folks, is the best reason of all. Steve Jobs over the years made us desire these things and now that he is gone, the desire still seems to be there. Thus come Friday Morning, I will be in line at the local Softbank Shop here in Tokyo to get my new iPhone 4S. (hopefully they get more than 3 this time around.)
