Well, what do you know?

Despite all the “disappointment” over a basic refresh rather than a newly designed iPhone, Apple has still managed to break records. Apple today revealed that pre-orders for its iPhone 4S have topped one million in the span of 24 hours, putting to shame its earlier pre-order record of 600,000 iPhone 4 pre-orders in a day.

It can’t be that surprising either. The iPhone 4 was the top device last year, making up more than half of all phone sales in Apple’s history. But even with that success, only 5 percent of all mobile phones (including feature phones) are iPhones. Thus, Apple has made some serious processor improvements, camera upgrades, and introduced the Siri personal voice assistant to the iPhone 4S.

Clearly, it’s paid off.

As we ponder what will happen to Apple without Steve Jobs, I keep coming back to a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a veteran Silicon Valley CEO who knew Jobs. This was just after Jobs had resigned as CEO of Apple. We got to talking about why Apple is so well-positioned in the post-PC era, and this executive zeroed in on something you don’t hear too often. “Steve Jobs told me he has 1,000 engineers working on chips,” he said. “Getting low power and smaller is the key to everything.”

The number was startling when I first heard it. I knew that Apple started building its own chip design team in 2009, but figured it had to be a few hundred people at most, not 5 percent of Apple’s non-retail workforce. (Apple employs more than 50,000 people worldwide, 30,000 of them in its retail stores). Apple started designing its own chips because Intel and AMD were still stuck in the PC era. Apple needs chips that are powerful enough, but also very low power.

Battery life is one of the most important features of a mobile device. Apple’s latest A5 processor, which first appeared in the iPad 2, will now power the iPhone 4S as well. Not only is the A5 twice as fast as the A4 in the current iPhone 4, but it slightly improves the battery life with 8 hours of talk time (versus 7 hours).

Not only are Apple’s processors extremely power efficient, but Apple is also removing the hard drives from its products and replacing them with flash memory chips. It’s not just iPhones and iPads, the MacBook Air’s storage is also flash. All of Apple’s products are moving in this direction. When you combine these two fundamental changes at the silicon level, “form factor no longer becomes an issue,” explained the Silicon Valley CEO.

You can put a computer into anything. Mobile phones and tablets, certainly. TVs, perhaps. But what else? It is only limited by the imagination of Apple’s engineers and what makes sense from a product point of view.

When Jobs retired, TechCrunch writer MG Siegler cautioned against focusing too much on the next iPhone. Jobs left Apple knowing that a string of post-PC products will be introduced in the years ahead. MG wrote:

It’s the longer roadmap that should really be the grand finale in the Jobs’ fireworks show.

Talking to sources in recent months, there has been one common refrain: that the things Apple is working on right now are the best things the company has ever done. These are things that will “blow your mind”, I’ve been told.

Jobs himself said when he resigned, “I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it.” Now we get to see what he meant by that. Jobs rebuilt Apple from the silicon up. It is the company itself which is his greatest product. And like all of his products, everything fits together: the chips, the hardware, the software, the industrial design, the developer platform, the tightly controlled manufacturing, the marketing, the retail stores.

This machine is proving adept at making and selling mobile computers—phones and tablets. But remember also that we are just at the beginning of the post-PC era. The iPhone launched 4 years ago, the iPad only a year and a half ago. It is becoming practical to put a computer into anything. Of course, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. And if anything, Apple is very disciplined about choosing what not to do (another Steve Jobs trait). But if you believe that post-PC devices will include more than just phones and tablets, it is not such a crazy idea that one day Apple will be churning them out as well.

Upgrading to the newest iPhone hardware each year means shelling out $200-$400 (or more if you're not eligible for upgrade pricing). If you want to upgrade but don't have the cash, here's how to sell your old iPhone to cover the cost of the new one and then some. More »

Sprint has long been Android territory, but today everything changes. There’s still about 24 hours left until the brand new, super snappy, personal assistant-equipped iPhone 4S is available for pre-order, but the yellow carrier has put the iPhone 4 up for pre-order this morning.

The 8GB iPhone 4 is running for $99 on a two-year contract with the “Now Network,” which means it’s the only iPhone 4 to offer up unlimited data. As far as shipping dates go, Sprint says that if you “order today, we’ll charge your card for your phone today and we’ll do our best to get a shiny new iPhone in your hands Friday, Oct. 14 or Saturday, Oct. 15.” So basically you’ll be getting the phone about the same time that iPhone 4S buyers receive their brand new toys.

The iPhone 4S is available for pre-order beginning tomorrow, and starts at $199 on a two-year contract. If you want to experience the in-store iPhone frenzy, go ahead and get in line early (like, really early) on Friday morning, October 14.

Sprint likely won’t have the iPhone 4 in stock for too much longer, so if this is what you’ve been waiting for then head over to Sprint (like right now) and get your pre-order on.

[via MobileBurn]

If you're looking to pre-order an iPhone 4S this Friday, are upgrading from an iPhone 4, and are hoping to take advantage of upgrade pricing, blogger Ben Brooks has some bad news for you: Even if you bought your iPhone 4 the first day was available, you may not be eligible for upgrade pricing until sometime in November. More »

As you may be aware, Apple held it’s big iPhone 5, er 4S, event in Cupertino today, and while the iCinco failed to make an appearance and the company’s stock plunged 5 percent as a result, it was still a good day for the Apple faithful. iOS 5 is coming on October 12th, and though some who’ve been waiting to upgrade were disappointed by the striking similarity between the iPhone 4 and the new iPhone 4S, Sprint users are now welcome, and the 4S is notably speedier.

And perhaps most exciting (depending on who you ask) is that Siri, the personal assistant app that uses natural language processing to answer questions, make recommendations, and eventually aims to replace your butler, will now be native on all iPhone 4Ses. Sure, some have already been using Siri on the iPad, Apple probably should have made this available for the iPhone 4 as well, and we’re all pretty surprised that Apple has kept the name Siri, after buying the company that makes its eponymous app back in April of last year, but now the app is native, always with you, and it works.

What’s so cool, as Apple said in their description of Siri, is that it’s “proactive, so it will question you until it finds what you’re looking for”. This should hopefully mean that you won’t have to shout your question 10 times before you divorce Siri and throw her in the toilet — Siri uses context and logic like some kind of sweet, sweet robot from the future. She’s a humble and intelligent assistant, and works towards proving the kind of deep voice integration that will be part of Apple iOS 5 (and mobile technology going forward).

However, what’s even more mind blowing is that Apple predicted this technology more than a quarter century ago. The following video has been making the rounds over the last 24 hours (and thanks to Sociable for first pointing it out), which you really have to see.

Apple’s “what if” exposition, which contains some late-’80s awesomeness, describes something called the “Knowledge Navigator” — a suped-up, tuxedo-ed personal assistant that users manipulate by way of voice and touch. According to the video, the personal assistant connects with all the major networks, features two-way videoconferencing, and helps you keep appointments, find, converge, and share documents — the works. It’s quite a feat considering the Apple IIGS had just been released the previous year.

Basically, The Knowledge Navigator predicts touch technology, the iPad, iPhone, Skype, FaceTime — and Siri. All in one talking, well-dressed device. The savvy technologists among us may be well aware of the progenitors and technological precursors to these devices and services, but here we have very real confirmation that Siri (and Apple products as a whole) have been in gestation in the minds of Apple’s wizards since (at least) 1987.

And the best part? If I’m not mistaken, this “futuristic” video is set in the year of 2011 — there’s a mention of an article written in 2006 that was supposedly created five years in the past. Now, even for those cynics and naysayers among us, that’s pretty fantastic. Hold on to the top of your head. I guess Apple didn’t steal the idea for iOS from Android after all.

Without further ado, below you can find the 1987 introduction to Knowledge Navigator and 2011′s introduction to Siri:

Image excerpt courtesy of WatchPlayRead

It may be that the most compelling new feature of the iPhone 4S isn’t iOS 5 or the A5 processor, but the new camera. I’ve given phone cameras a lot of guff for the generally poor image quality that results from a small sensor and bad glass, but this really is a problem that camera-makers have been trying to alleviate. And the iPhone 4S is looking like the best effort yet.

Why should you care about the iPhone’s new camera? Let’s go down the list and make sense of the new features.

8 megapixels. Well. This one is self-explanatory, but really the least important. Other phones and small cameras have high megapixel counts, and really, you don’t want or need that many. The thing is all those tiny pixel wells have to be packed into such a small place that you end up with image quality problems. In this case your best photos will look better and it probably won’t affect other shots negatively.

1080p. As above, not really amazing in itself; other devices this size and smaller shoot 1080p. We’ll have to see how it looks in action, but I’m guessing you’ll be seeing a lot of distortion during camera movement due to the rolling-shutter effect on smaller sensors. 1080p resolution doesn’t mean 1080p quality, but if the sensor supports it, there’s no reason not to enable it. I’m just hoping there will be hacks to enable some better framerates.

“73% more light“. The new sensor features “next-generation backside illumination,” an upgrade to the upgrade that made the original iPhone 4 camera much better. We won’t know for sure who makes the camera until the teardown comes, but Omnivision did the last one and they have a newer version (the OV8812 pictured) with the exact resolution specified. It’s in the EVO 4G as well. The improved sensitivity probably isn’t the jump from 3GS to iPhone 4, but better low light performance is always welcome. Backside illumination essentially flips the sensor over so light strikes the light sensitive bits without having to navigate a forest of circuitry.

Faster picture-taking. The new sensor was described by Schiller as being “1/3rd faster,” which is a phenomenally vague description, but I’m guessing the onboard electronics are able to offload the image data 30% faster. But with these small sensors, what matters isn’t getting the image off the sensor but getting it processed, encoded, and displayed to the user. The A5 processor is still something of a mystery, but it’s no secret that a major focus was on graphics enhancement. As I suggested in that link, having a chunk of the CPU entirely dedicated to JPEG processing is a given. Chances are the next iPad will have similarly enhanced photo-taking abilities. So the combination of a faster sensor and an expedited pipeline for that image data to go through makes the iPhone 4S camera twice as fast as the competition (i.e. about a second faster by their measure, your mileage may vary) at making the shot happen. It also allows for more accurate white balancing and color tweaking, so your shots won’t look like they were taken next to a bunch of lava or under a blue sun.

Improved lens. The most important part of a camera is… the photographer — but right after that is the lens. And the lens of the iPhone 4 was already pretty solid for a camera phone: F/2.8 (apparently limited to F/3) at about 30mm equivalent focal length. The new one is f/2.4, about half a stop better, which doesn’t sound like much but at this point of the aperture scale counts for a lot. It’s a pretty big increase in the total amount of light hitting the sensor. The focal length wasn’t specified but Schiller mentioned it was “super wide,” which if wider than 30mm equivalent starts putting the iPhone into true wide-angle territory (starts around 24mm equivalent if you ask me) — but he may have been referring to the aperture. At any rate the half-stop improvement is real enough.

Real-time stabilization. This is a nice feature for small cameras, since, lacking heft, they tend to wiggle around a lot. I’m assuming it’s not optical stabilization, since that would require more space than they’ve got, so it must be electronic stabilization based on live image analysis. Again this is the A5 at work. By designing the camera’s image processor around the hardware (and vice versa), they can do this kind of heavy graphical analysis without taxing the battery too much.

Overall it’s probably the best camera system attached to a phone on the market right now. The changes aren’t superficial, and the camera should be on the short list of reasons to consider upgrading.

Despite predictions to the contrary, Apple did not announce a cheaper, mass market version of the iPhone today. Instead, it announced an upgraded iPhone 4 called the iPhone 4S. It’s the same on the outside, but with all new insides.

However, there are more affordable iPhones now on the market: the old ones. Apple says it’s keeping the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 around. Not only that, it’s dropping their prices. Why would Apple keep these aging devices alive? Simple. To battle Android, Symbian, RIM and Windows Phone – especially in emerging markets.

According to today’s announcement, the iPhone 3GS is now free with a contract. The iPhone 4 has been reduced to $99. While the new lower prices are based on 2-year agreements with mobile carriers, the fact that the phones are not being killed off entirely is important.

These are the “new” cheaper, mass market iPhones.

Apple didn’t specify where these discounted devices would be sold, only noting that the iPhone 4S would be available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K., France, Germany and Japan. It would not be surprising to see these older models used as Apple’s inroads into emerging markets, though.

Here’s why:

More people are buying Android smartphones than iPhones. That fact is not in dispute.

According to recent estimates from comScore, Android’s U.S. market share is 41.8% to Apple’s 27%. In Europe, where Symbian still reigns, it’s 22.3% for Android vs. 20.3% for iPhone. Worldwide, some analysts now peg Android as having nearly 50% of the smartphone market.

What iPhone lacks in volume, though, it makes up for in profit, capturing two-thirds of available mobile phone profits in Q2 2011. One could even argue that Apple does not need to provide a low-cost iPhone – it was doing just fine without one, thank you very much.

For Apple, however, not having a presence in emerging markets was a challenge it needed to address. Take for example, India – the second largest telecom market after China. According to a recent Bloomberg report, Apple accounted for just 2.6% of India’s smartphone shipments in a market with 602 million subscribers. That’s fewer devices than it shipped to Norway, Belgium or Israel.

Nokia dominates the Indian market, with 46% of shipments in Q2. Even struggling handset maker RIM reached 15% in shipments there. And Samsung, who plays the field with bada, Android and Windows Phone devices, reached 21% (source: IDC). Bloomberg cites issues with iPhone availability, advertising and the Indian carriers, the latter having just started to launch their 3G networks this year. (Without 3G, much of what the iPhone could do, it only does well when Wi-Fi is available.) Price, too, is an obvious concern.

Meanwhile, in China, the iPhone is expensive, sometimes even costing more than it does in the U.S. That’s ironic, given China’s role in iPhone manufacturing and assembly. It’s also only available through the country’s second-largest carrier, China Unicom. However, reports from July stated that Apple CEO Tim Cook (then COO) was looking to bring the iPhone to China’s largest carrier, China Mobile, which has 600 million subscribers compared with China Unicom’s 200 million.

Despite the technical challenges of launching in these regions, not to mention the competition from name-brand competitors and knockoffs alike, Apple knows it can not continue to ignore the need to compete in these markets. China and India, of all the emerging markets, are important due to their sheer size – after all, Apple doesn’t generate all its income from device sales. Failing to capture market share in these regions is simply a missed opportunity to generate revenue.

Even Cook admitted during Apple’s most recent earnings call China’s importance to Apple’s growth in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as its importance to the company’s overall results. According to Cook, iPhone sales in China were a “key driver” of Apple’s $8.8 billion in revenue for the quarter. And Chinese Apple stores have the highest traffic (4x the traffic as their American counterparts) and highest revenue of any Apple stores in the world.

Today, during the Apple keynote, Cook talked about the opening of two new retail stores in Asia this past week: Hong Kong and Shanghai. The Shanghai store, now the largest in Asia, saw 100,000 visitors on its opening weekend. For comparison purposes, it took the L.A. store a month to hit that same number.

So while a “cheaper” iPhone in these markets would mean lower margins on Apple hardware, the incredible size of the markets means there’s an opportunity to make up for that loss through device sales potential.

Competitors Android, RIM, Nokia and Windows Phone often battle iPhone on price, as their app ecosystems and content businesses (e.g., Zune is no iTunes, Google Music doesn’t even sell songs) are still lacking in comparison to Apple’s. With price out of the equation, Apple’s growth potential has just been radically changed.

In other words, with the new iPhone 4S, Apple continues to cater to the high-end crowd who would have upgraded anyway. With the iPhone 4 and 3GS, Apple goes after the market that wanted a smartphone of any kind, as long as it was affordable. It goes after those who wanted the iPhone, but didn’t have the money.

That said, a discounted iPhone alone may not be enough for Apple to take the market share lead in smartphones, given that there hundreds of Android devices vs. just these three iPhone models. It stands to reason, though, it will at least make a dent in Android’s seemingly unstoppable market share growth.

Oh, and the new Sprint iPhone won’t hurt either.

Image credits: asymco, Apple

Investors were not blown away by Tim Cook Apple event today. With no news of the iPhone 5 at today’s Apple event, the Cupertino-based company is seeing its stock drop in value. Apple’s stock opened at $374.57, and dipped as low as $355 in intraday trading before starting to rebound. The stock dropped nearly 20 points after Apple didn’t reveal the much awaited (and hyped) iPhone 5.

Instead, Apple debuted the iPhone 4S, which looks a lot like the iPhone 4, but includes a new processor, a CDMA/GSM chip that makes it a world phone and a new camera. Plus, it will be available via Sprint now (but this isn’t an exclusive deal, as previously reported).

Apple’s stock has been performing particularly well over the past few months, passing $400 for the first time in late July. Apple hit a high of $422 in September.

The level the stock is at right now still gives Apple around a $330 billion market cap, so investors are still doing just fine. And the company revealed some staggering stats around Apple’s dominance in the music, mobile device, and app economies. But some of what was revealed today was announced earlier this summer at the company’s WWDC developer conference, including an in-depth Twitter integration. Clearly, today, investors were hoping for a major surprise. But then, you can never please Wall Street.

If you were hoping for a brand new iPhone 5 today, you might be a little disappointed. Instead, Apple announced the iPhone 4S, which looks exactly like the iPhone 4—on the outside. On the inside, it’s a whole different story, and that the message Apple tried to get across during its presentation today. So let’s unpack the iPhone 4S and take a look at its guts to see what’s new.

First, and most importantly, the iPhone 4S will be powered by a new A5 processor. The A5 is a dual-core processor which will be up to twice as fast as the current A4, and seven times faster processing graphics. Apple is also claiming faster data speeds (with maximums of 14.4 Mbps download speeds, and 5.8 Mbps upload). The battery life is slightly longer *8 hours talk time versus 7 hours for the iPhone 4), but standby time is much less (200 hours versus 300).

Second, it’s got a dual CDMA/GSM chip for different networks, making it a world phone (and cheaper to manufacture to boot since Apple won’t have to make two different models for different carriers). The antenna is also redesigned to improve call quality (AT&T should be loving that tweak). There are actually two of them, which can switch between transmitting and receiving.

Third, the camera is much better. Not only is it an 8-megapixel sensor with 60 percent more pixels than the one in the iPhone 4, but it is also designed to capture 73 percent more light 33 percent faster. The camera includes a high end infrared filter as well as five layered lenses which should improve the sharpness of pictures by up to 30 percent. And since the camera is one of the most used features on the phone, double-tapping the home button now opens the camera. The time it takes to get off your first shot is 1.1 seconds, and half a second for each shot after that. And it shoots 1080p video as well.

That’s the hardware. The iPhone 4S also will ship with iOS 5, and all the iCloud-enabled apps. AirPlay will aslo work on the phone so that you can stream videos wirelessly to your Apple TV.

But the biggest new piece of software that takes advantage of the A5 chip is the Siri Assistant, a voice-controlled assistant you can call up anytime by holding down the home button for a few seconds. You can ask it the weather, time, directions from Yelp, schedule a meeting on your calendar, reply to messages, play a song from iTunes, or ask any factual question via Wolfram Alpha. All with voice commands.

Prices start at $199 for a 16GB phone, and go up to $399 for 64GB. Who’s buying one?

Screenshot via Engadget