The iPhone 4S is a natural progression from the computer, but also the iPod. The device is a similar shape to the original music player, which brought Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy and nonexistence at the start of the century. The original iPhone was essentially an iPod Touch with some phone functionality thrown in. Since then the iPhone has evolved and changed in design, and now the iPhone is a more central product for Apple than the iPod. Even so, it still retains all of the features that originally made the iPod range so popular. So, how does the phone perform as an iPod and music player?
The iPhone 4S’ media player uses the familiar iPod layout, which means it has all tracks, artists, genres or whatever you wish arranged alphabetically or in a number of other ways. This obviously makes it very easy to find. And the excellent Retina screen really comes into play here when scrolling through your music collection with the album cover flow.
The phone comes with the usual Apple headphones, which though are okay, leave a lot to be desired in terms of comfort and sound quality. Serious music lovers would probably be advised to get a new set to use instead – but then serious music lovers probably already have a cherished set of headphones to hand.
The iPhone 4S comes in a 16GB or 32GB form, much like the iPhone 4, but for the first time now also comes with a 64GB version. This is the most amount of storage that can be found on any smartphone at present, although there is still no memory expansion with microSD. Although 64GB internal storage is great some will feel it doesn’t allow for the music holding capacity of the large 120GB iPods. The 64GB version of the iPhone 4S deals is also a great deal more expensive than the 16GB version, which most people have been opting for.
For the first time the iPhone 4S provides an environment where internal storage space does not matter so much. This is because the new iPhone 4S comes with iCloud, which allows users to listen to any of the songs on their library up to an unlimited amount for free. The great thing about iCloud is that you won’t have to upload music to the cloud as Apple just uses the TrackIDs on the music to allow you access to play the music from a central server. This saves time uploading and is a real genius move from the people at Apple, as it is essentially a mix between iTunes and Spotify – but without the adverts.
The only faults we would label at Apple come with the existence of the HTC Beats Audio phones such as the Sensation XE and Sensation XL. Their Beats Audio features really trump the iPhone 4S in terms of sound quality. This is partially to do with the great headphones HTC is supplying with their devices and the poor ones Apple has with its own. If Apple upped its game in this area and offered a pair of excellent headphones such as the Beats ones provided by HTC, it would be the undisputed music champion of phones.
