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back to article iPhone 4S pre-orders obliterate sales records

Over one million seekers of the latest shiny-shiny surrendered their credit card info to Apple on the first day of iPhone 4S pre-order availability, securing their place in line for the latest iteration of the überpopular smartphone. iPhone 4S The iPhone 4S Although the iPhone 4S may have been met with more than a bit of a …

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    1. Piro Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      I was almost with you there..

      Until the last line.

      Just google: stuck pixels iPhone 4

      There's nothing special about Apple's build quality. At all. There have been a huge number of build quality related gaffes in Apple desktops and laptops throughout the years.

      If you had a dual G5, the watercooler pump seals probably went on you and leaked into your power supply.

      If you had an iMac a few generations ago, the capacitors probably started failing on you.

      If you have a Macbook Pro, it probably burns your nuts off.

      I don't know where this myth comes from. They do make things that have a VERY NICE FEEL out of the box, I'll definitely give you that.

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      1. Piro Silver badge
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Huh?

        How did I get a thumbs down? Does someone really think Apple products are immune from failure?

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        1. Eradicate all BB entrants
          Reply Icon

          unfortunately....

          ....your post was the equivalent of walking into the Westboro Baptist Church in a Liberace costume shouting 'Darwin rules'

          The Job squad is the same as the God squad, can't accept/discuss intelligent rebuttals of their claims.

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    2. Peter 48
      Reply Icon

      if you have been relying on itunes to organize your music that may be part of the problem. it can be a real dog when it comes to treating the id3 tag of the tracks, particularly with mp3s. (windows media player is just as bad btw). if you use a windowsmachine, have you tried mediamonkey? rather ugly interface, but it has the best file management out there and can sync to every device out there incl ipods.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "This quality Android based phone comes complete with a cigar lighter, cash machine, car jack, sex toy, beer dispenser, firearm, can watch all pay-per-view and porn for free and is made out of solid gold"

    "But is it an iPhone 4S?"

    "No, it's a quality android based phone"

    "That's not an iPhone though"

    "Correct, this is a far SUPERIOR phone to an iPhone"

    "But it's not an iPhone 4S?"

    Fail.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      There seems to be a superfluous "and" between "view" and "porn".

      (If someone invents a PC keyboard that allows me to type one handed while watching the above I would be very grateful)

      Damn, just got hit in the eye by some slimy white stuff!!!!

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  3. Metz
    Paris Hilton

    The Great P.Y. Barnum would be proud...

    ..."There's a sucker born every minute."

    Why are people so desperate to defend this phone....if it was so good, it wouldn't need defending.

    In truth, it's just another phone. There's nothing remarkable about it. It doesn't do anything that any one of 30 other devices can do.

    iTunes? Nothing special, except the price you pay is higher than anywhere else... and you can use it on non-apple phone anyway.

    Battery? Trying to claim it is better than other manufacturers to make up for the fact that it can't be replaced is just stupid. Come on. Admit it... it's not better than anyone elses battery... it's made in the same factories, using the same technology as batteries in HTC, Nokias, whatever. It's just a battery, and we're all disapointed in the way they perform. But atleast non-apple users can go on ebay and spend £20 on a new one if they need to.

    AppStore? There's no doubt that the 'average' quality of apps in the AppStore is better than the Android Marketplace...but that's like saying that the average quality of person in the exclusive nightclub in your town is better. They have a man on the door to keep the hillbillies out. It's doesn't mean that the posh folk can't go into the redneck bar down the road, does it. Also, don't forget that the Marketplace is a few years behind the AppStore...and it's catching up fast.

    The only real difference about the iPhone are the people who buy it.... they are more willing to suspend disbelief and splash the cash for the badge on the back.

    Paris....because she's a sucker too. :)

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      @Metz

      "Why are people so desperate to defend this phone....if it was so good, it wouldn't need defending."

      They aren't defending the phone, they are defending their decision to buy the phone (or covet it anyhow).

      But equally you haven't addressed the singular counter that seems to be "why are people so desperate to prove their phone is better than this phone ...if theirs was so good we wouldn't be talking about the iPhone 4S"

      "The only real difference about the iPhone are the people who buy it.... they are more willing to suspend disbelief and splash the cash for the badge on the back."

      Might as well say: "The only real difference about the iPhone are (sic) the people who actively don't buy it...they are more willing to suspend common sense and splash cash on something they don't really want for the badge not on the back"

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      1. It'sa Mea... Mario
        Reply Icon

        Point well made Lee

        Cannot understand down votes you got, there is really nothing to argue with.

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  4. TheItCat
    Mushroom

    The best marketing tool ever:

    a high profile death.

    Profiting from death is almost an American tradition now. Just look at the charts to see Michael Jackson's work still selling well and I see Columbo DVDs did pretty well for a few weeks when he kicked the bucket.

    People need to stop being such morons.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      oh that's nice.

      You're giving tasteless a bad name.

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  5. Alistair MacRae
    WTF?

    What I want to know is...

    How does it know who your wife is.

    I watched the video about SIRI and he says "Tell my wife I'm running late" and it does it. HOW!?

    Unless his contact is down in the phone as "my wife"

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    1. jai
      Reply Icon

      Because you can tell Siri "My wife is ...." and then when you tell it to send messages to your wife, it looks up the previous contact you linked.

      Seem to work for most familial relations. Although, not sure if caters for the more convoluted family trees such as "brother-uncle" "mother-sister" etc etc.

      Maybe it auto-sets a bango ringtone for those contacts

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Well duh

      If it doesn't know who your wife is, it'll ask you by popping up a list of contacts for you to choose.

      Next time it'll know who your wife is.

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    3. Peter 48
      Reply Icon

      not sure but

      maybe there is a field in the contact description that allows you to add a releationship to the contact i.e. wife, son, boss, doctor etc? Can any iphone owners elaborate?

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    4. Silverburn
      Reply Icon

      ...also...

      ...how late is 'late'? 2 mins? an hour? a day? can it tell how late you'll be, even if you youself don't even know by how much?

      and 'tell' - will it phone her up and say "X is running late". Or will it txt? or email?

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  6. Brett Weaver
    Joke

    @Alistair - Sorry to be the one to tell you...

    But everyone knows your wife :-)

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Ah the usual

    "Mine is better than yours"

    Its down to personal choice really - if someone wants to buy Apple crap (IMO) then that is their choice.

    Mines the one with the Samsung Galaxy S2 in the pocket.

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  8. Ian Bremner
    Trollface

    iPhones are like string

    Every yo-yo wants one

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  9. eSeM

    Spin?

    Of course this will break records for first day sales as it is simultaneously being launched in 7 countries as opposed to just the US.

    Does anyone know how this figure compares to the sum of the sales figures for previous fist day launches in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan?

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  10. Miek

    "We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,"

    Looks like they were expecting a flop.

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    1. Armando 123
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      Nah, just more marketing blah, which is what we should all expect from all companies.

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  11. Joey

    What I get out of this article...

    ... is that the 'tecnocrati' who said 'meh' haven't a clue about what *people* want. They know what *they* want but they just overvalue their own opinions and when they see somebody else getting it right, they have a hissy fit. Technology should be transparent, it is only a means to an end. No matter how many 'features' a phone has, the user has to find them useful and be comfortable using them. The trick is knowing what to leave out! That's why Apple get it right.

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  12. sheep++;
    Go

    Not an Apple fanboi

    I have no Apple products and can't see me buying one. They may be decent quality or better, but they are expensive and seem to lock you in to their evil empire (apologies to the late Mr. Jobs)

    I went to buy a new MP3 player recently and the Sony one I got before was perfectly OK at around £40 or less. But the Apple ones were in the hundreds of £'s which is just ridiculous and then you (I think) are tied into ITunes and DRM issues.

    Pah! I say PAH!

    For the record my phone is a Samsung Galaxy S (the first one, not the new one) and I love it. If you've never tried it, you have to give the Swype system a try - creating a text or other document without (mostly) typing. Run your fingers around the screen keys and it usually gets it right. You don't even need to be that accurate. Much faster than typing on a screen keyboard. Wish I had something similar in my programming editor.

    Oh well, that's my rant over.

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  13. HelenaHandcart

    "most people use holsters for their phones"

    I have never seen a woman carrying a phone in a holster.

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  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ".....iPhone 4 is proving be quite the tasty, tempting treat to Mr. and Ms. Average Joe and Jane."

    My god, I could not have put it better myself.

    AVERAGE! Average, tech illiterate people buying a phone to give them some status.

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    1. Mick Sheppard
      Reply Icon

      Its so easy to mock. Far too many technologists have no idea how to make technology that is usable ordinary people. Its possible to have too much choice.

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    2. Armando 123
      Reply Icon

      "buying a phone to give them some status."

      And how many geeks buy things to give them some status among other geeks?

      I have an iPhone because it does all I need, it's been very reliable, does all I want very simply, and Apple's after-sale service has been second to none for the last few years. I would prefer not being on AT&T, but until I can convince my wife to move all of us to Sprint, that ain't happening no matter WHAT phone I buy.

      1 1
    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Er...

      Are you saying you would prefer to own a company whose products are only usable by techies? As gigantic as the "techie" market may be, I'm pretty sure that's not what Apple's competitors are aiming for.

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  15. Hugo CHAV
    FAIL

    Jurno's epic fail

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/fail_32.png, Given the reception in the press after the launch, I would hope that pretty much every technology journalist and pundit go's back to school. Clearly most of the industry experts completely missed this. what is happening here?

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "....My technophobe wife streams music and videos daily from her iPhone to the AppleTV....da da da da...."

    See! What have I been saying?

    Apple = technically illiterate. (the shame of the grandparents not being able to program the VCR)

    Be seen with an iPhone and be seen as "a bit thick".

    3 5
    1. uhuznaa
      Reply Icon

      The more I read such idiotic comments about the "tech illiterate" the more I prefer to be lumped in with the average instead of with the "tech literate" idiots. I AM a techie, but the sheer arrogance and aggressive blindness of my fellow geeks shames me really.

      6 1
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        If your upset over the term "tech illiterate" then your options are 2:

        Take the shame

        Learn something new

        Personally I'd prefer to see the standard raised. Not everyone brought down!

        1 1
        1. Armando 123
          Reply Icon
          FAIL

          "If your upset over the term "tech illiterate" then your options are 2:

          Take the shame

          Learn something new"

          *facepalm* And perhaps you can learn something new, like the apostrophe.

          1 1
    2. Lallabalalla
      Reply Icon
      Mushroom

      Dick

      Apple = I have better things to do than constantly prove my "technical literacy" by dicking around with my phone settings trying to get the thing to sync/work/get on wifi etc. Like get on with my job/play with my kids.... actually I'd even rather gnaw my own leg off than go back to fighting my OS every day. Is why I ditched the windows box at home.

      I bet your car has an aftermarket exhaust and bolt-on go-faster bits, and you're constantly fiddling with the EMS settings (if and when you can get the lappy to boot without demanding an hour of updates).

      1 1
    3. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Mushroom

      Actually most truly smart people choose to spend their time doing stuff which is important to them. My wife has other priorities than fighting with tech to get it to do what she wants. She also has an MBA and a Porsche.

      Your post smacks of rank desperation to 'belong': the words of a child who when realizing a coveted object is out of reach, responds with a petulant "Didn't want it anyway, so nyaaah".

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  17. uhuznaa

    First benchmarks are in...

    For all of you still interested in specs -- anandtech.com has the first benchmarks (SunSpider, GLBenchmark, Rightware) of the 4S.

    It's nearly twice as fast as the Samsung Galaxy S2 accross the board.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Ahem ...

      Sources, please.

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      1. uhuznaa
        Reply Icon

        http://www.anandtech.com/show/4951/iphone-4s-preliminary-benchmarks-800mhz-a5-slightly-slower-gpu-than-ipad-2

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    2. Mick Sheppard
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Don't worry. The fanbois will be along in a moment to say that Samsung will announce a new phone shortly, at the delayed presentation, that will be twice as quick as the 4S and at half the price.

      Who are these people anyway doing benchmarks? You can't introduce facts to the anti-Apple zealots. There is only one true way !Apple.

      1 1
    3. uhuznaa
      Reply Icon

      Guys, if you don't like the benchmarks, thumb down Anandtech, not my comment please. Or even better, stick the thumbs into your eyes.

      Anandtech is not an Apple Fanboi site, by the way. Rather the opposite.

      3 1
      1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Agreed: last year the same Anandtech systematically dismissed Apple's excuses about the iPhone 4 reception issues and showed that it was misconceived antenna design at fault, and they did it without resorting to name-calling or gloating. Just someone with actual knowledge of how stuff works applying that knowledge, rather than regurgitating what Apple's PR handed out to the faithful.

        So if this year, they found the iPhone 4S to be twice as fast as the Galaxy S2, then it probably is twice as fast.

        1 1
    4. Peter 48
      Reply Icon

      benchmark results don't add up

      There is something very fishy about those results - I just ran the javascript sunpider test on my Galaxy S2 as supplied by Three with the stock browser and got a score of 3300, not the 4100 they had listed. Not that benchmarks mean much anyway. The iphone4 was already fast enough for pretty much every app on the market and the same goes for 90% of android and winmo phones released over the last year.

      What I want to see is a reliable battery test result for the iphone4S. Considering the battery is at best a 1600mAh (up from 1420mAh on the iphone4) whilst running a chip that is over twice as fast and considerably more power hungry as a result (it is only slightly slower than the A5 in the ipad2 and that has a battery with 4x the capacity - 6900mAh). That would be interesting. iOS is already one of the most optimized platforms out there. Will they be able to squeeze any more juice out of iOS5 or have they crippled the A5 for everyday task to eek more life out of it?

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      1. uhuznaa
        Reply Icon

        From the benchmarks it looks as if the A5 in the 4S runs only with 800 MHz (exactly like the A4 in the iPhone 4). This will lower the power draw dramatically. And then the iPad has a much larger screen which is the major power hog anyway. And the A5-powered iPad 2 does actually have a slightly better battery life than the A4-powered iPad 1. I don't see why this should be different with the iPhone.

        Well, we will see soon.

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      2. Grey Area
        Reply Icon

        Just tried sunspider on Galaxy S2 as well. Got 3431 on mine.

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  18. Olafthemighty
    Coffee/keyboard

    " world's most appropriately named marketing chieftan"

    <SPLOOOOOOOOT>

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  19. TonyJ

    I've used but never owned 'droids.

    I've owned seven BlackBerry handsets over the years, going way back to when they looked like a desktop calculator.

    I had a dally with an HTC HD7 earlier this year - quite liked it, but like the original iPhone, it's lack of features I take for granted was a huge problem for me (me, personally - others may not be so bothered about a lack of cut and paste, for example). I also found it uncomfortably large. Now my elderly neihbour, to whom I gave it, loves the fact that he can read everything on it and it has big tiles he can mash with his fingers.

    I've had an iPhone 3GS and now have a 4. I switched to iPhones because I got tired of the poor build quality of my BB's. When the annual handset renewal comes up in January, I'll no doubt look to get the 4S.

    I also didn't like the fact that on a BlackBerry, to sync more than just email (e.g. calendars), I needed an additional server component (BES) whereas the others just connect and work.

    And really, for me, that's the crux of it. I like how it looks and I like how it feels but at the end of the day it's just a phone and for me, it works as well as I need.

    It isn't a fashion statement or a statement of wealth and privilege. It might be seen as a mindless following and I will admit that I didn't really put any thought into it beyond "BlackBerry's seem to be ridiculously unreliable so what else should I try?".

    If you want to hate me for my choice of a mobile telephone/car/computer then I feel quite sorry for you. I certainly don't judge a person by the _things_ they own.

    I feel no need to defend my choice - if you don't like it for reasons x, y and z that's fine. It's your decision. I respect that.

    But...it's just a thing and in 100 years it, me and these silly extremist point of view arguments won't matter a jot.

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  20. Jonathan White
    FAIL

    @TheItCat - you're seriously suggesting people are throwing several hundred dollars/pounds/euros/whatever at a new phone, that they can't even actually have yet, simply because Steve Jobs dies last week? Seriously?

    No, come on, seriously?

    Chuffing hell.

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    1. Dave 15
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      Amazing to commit several hundred anything on something you can't try - unless you have more money than sense....ohh, Apple buyers...

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  21. Dave 15

    Apple have media such as the BBC doing their advertising for them - uncritically. No other manufacturer or product gets the airtime and free publiciity the iPhone does.

    The camera on the iPhone is outshone in performance - anyway you measure it - by cameras on the last years Nokia phones. The lockdown of the iPhone to only apps from the appstore seems to me to be a bit of a shot in the foot, but I guess few really care.

    The biggest difference iPhone vs the rest is the free coverage provided by the BBC and others. No other product manufacturer gets so much free advertising. The BBC especially should be ashamed of themselves for the uncritical, biased, often factually incorrect coverage. (I will never forget them telling me the iPhone was the first phone to download applications - more than 10 years after I was doing exactly that with SonyEricsson and Nokia smartphones - all running on an operating system created in BRITAIN by a BRITISH company employing BRITISH engineers - but then you wouldn't expect the BRITISH broadcasting corporation to do anything but stab the licence fee victims in the back would you)

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