Jury Still Out on New iPhone 4S

In the wake of the momentous news of Steve Jobs passing, Apple is reporting record pre-orders for its upcoming iPhone 4S , due to be available this Friday, Oct. 14.

The demand is a bit surprising to me, as the new iPhone 4S looks the same as earlier models, although it does boast a faster processor and a better camera along with other enhancements. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a tech version of the “dead artist” phenomena going on here… where the passing of an artist stimulates interest in and pushes up the value of the his now-finite collection of creations.

That's especially true because it’s still too early to tell whether the 4S will be a big deal or a big disappointment. Despite the other changes, I think that judgment will largely rest on how well the device’s new digital voice assistant, dubbed Siri, actually delivers on its promise of being a virtual secretary.

The promise, at least, is quite compelling for mobile business people, especially drivers. The ability to have emails read to you -- and to be able to simply speak to send messages or schedule appointments -- could make time spent behind the wheel a lot more productive. 

But Apple’s impressive demos do not guarantee that Siri will actually be all that useful. In my experience (and probably yours, too) voice-control functions are notoriously finicky. All too often, you have to say the instructions multiple times to get the desired result, endure frustratingly long waits for simple actions, and be alert for potentially embarrassing errors.

It will take some doing before I’d be willing to send a voice-to-text message without checking what’s actually being sent, and that could be dangerous when your eyes are supposed to be glued to the road.

Unless it works really, really well, Siri could easily join all the other voice apps in the “yeah, I know it’s there but I hardly ever use it” category. And that would leave iPhone 4S as a pretty modest upgrade, since at least for iPhone 4 users, processor speed and camera quality are not currently big problems demanding to be solved. 

The fact that Apple has stolen a page from Google and dubbed Siri a beta doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. It’s entirely possible that Siri will start slowly but gradually become more useful over time. But that scenario is unlikely to make the iPhone 4S seem important.

Of course, as soon as actual users start jabbering into their new iPhones on October 14, we’ll quickly find out whether the 4S means "for Success" or just stands "for So What."