I'm going to go through the event in order, thanks to Engadget, and pick out that things that really struck me.
The first thing I saw was that the "Mobile Installed Base" was iOS 43% and Android 33%. I can only come to reason that his is because of the iPad. All the numbers indicate that Android has the major share when it comes to smartphones. I venture to say that eventually, as tablets catch up, this number that Apple touted will no longer be true either. You'll have cheaper options for people than the iPad, causing the Android install base to go up. Not to mention we have Windows 8 lurking around the corner.
Notifications are new (see copied Android), well sorta. You can't really see a good shot of it in the post but apparently they are "visible from the top by swiping down".
The iPhone is now "PC Free". "You can activate and update you device without plugging it in." Wow, that's new, except not really. Android has been doing it since the beginning, save for a few phones.
Then you've got the, not so new, feature "Find My Friends". I'm not sure if anyone's of heard of Google Latitude, but I've been doing that with my friends for well over a year.
Up to this point we've only been talking about the "new" features of iOS 5. However, now comes the announcement of the...wait for it...iPhone 4S. Ok, I know, if you've see the event or keep up with phones at all then you already knew what I was going to say. Anyway, apparently "despite competitors trying really hard to copy the iPhone 4, they haven't really been able to come close". Really Apple?! Do you not look at the other phones that have been released out there? Let me pick this myth apart piece by piece and then give you a summary.
Retina Display. Ok, I'll give you this one. The display is really nice, but not so nice that I'd prefer it on that tiny 3.5 inch screen instead of say oh, 4.3 inches.
Dual Core Processor. Nothing new there.
8 hours of 3G talk time. Big deal.
Max Data Speeds 14.4 (HSDPA). Can anyone say slow? They even were dumb enough to show a graph of Android phones that have been out for months that already do the same thing.
Both GSM and CDMA. "World Phone". Which means, it will run on any carrier around the world. I've got to admit. That's pretty cool.
New Camera with 8 MP. My Evo has 8 MP and it recently reached end of life with Sprint.
It takes 1.6 seconds to get a cup of coffee. At least if you believe Apple.
1080p Video recording. Again, it's been done.
The final awesome thing that the new iPhone 4s will is called, Siri. It's Apple's new voice control. Now, I'm not going to try to pick each feature of it apart. Mostly because I only use Google Voice currently to send my text messages. However Google does have a handy video that demonstrates how it works. Oh, and it was uploaded in August of 2010. So, voice search is a feature that's more than a year old.
Finally, when it comes to featurues, if you want to see some phone comparisons that others have done take a look at the one TalkAndroid did or Engadget.
Oh yeah, forgot all about the stock thing. Below you'll see Apple stock. Now I realize that I should have taken this screen capture yesterday or else there are some tools to get a better picture of this stock than what I've got here. Either way, I've used a green box to point out what I'm trying to show you. That is, after the announcement of the iPhone 4S Apple stock dropped roughly $12.
