Apple will bring out an iPhone 6 shortly (September, probably). iOS 8 is already announced, which will probably be the nail in the coffin for my iPhone 4 (which is already not very fast with iOS7 - ie, slow enough to be a bit annoying). So I imagine that a 4s with iOS 8 will provide a similar experience. If you wait until the 6 comes out, you could get a 5 cheaply, no doubt (after all, the current one is the 5s). Alternatively, get the best one now and use it for about 4 years until everything has surpassed it and it starts to annoy you.
It sounds like the 4S isn't a bargain and it is old technology, and the 5 is about to the superseded so it isn't a bargain either. Therefore I will wait and see what September brings.
The 5 is already superseded. The current phone is the 5s - same shape as a 5 but with faster chip and the magic "thumbprint" recognition security button. The other current phone is the 5c, which is a 5 but in a natty plastic brightly coloured case. So when the 6 appears, the 5 will be essentially their 3rd fastest phone, the 4s the 4th fastest. I wouldn't be remotely surprised to find the 4s disappears from the range with the bog standard 5 as the budget option. iPhones are still good if you just want the Apple piece of mind, fewer viruses, and if you have other Apple things like Mac or iPad. In which case, getting a phone that is not made by Apple is just needless complication.
I'm not convinced of the 'apple piece of mind' thing tbh All buying apple will do is guarantee you that within 2 or 3 models time (if you're lucky) the OS won't run properly on your device anymore thus forcing you to an upgrade, I've seen it on two of my iPads, 3 iPhones and two iPods. I'm afraid after all of that I completely lost faith and will now only go android OS Googles android doesn't take that direction as it's a much wider used OS and therefor google don't really want to hinder anybody from buying apps, you'll find today's current build of android works just as well on much older phones. Google don't make the most popular phones nor do they have a large market share of phone hardware so they just want to keep you going with the OS and App Store access Also in regards to apps you'll find android probably has more nowadays and many of the same, in fact I'm pretty sure android is the more popular OS by a margin so developers no longer flock to apple first, they make more money per app on android. You can still port music over from iTunes, you can still back up to google FOC but with more free storage than you get with iCloud, I'm struggling nowadays to think of one thing the iphone does better. My htc one m7 is a beautiful phone, milled out of a single billet aluminium block and it's super fast. The new m8 is even better and I'd get one as soon as my contract allows. Android is no longer the future, it's simply the now. It's market leader for a reason, you get more choice, more connectivity, more apps and for the last 2 or 3 releases better phones ( android devices widely rated higher than iphone 4 onwards)
It's clear the iPhone is no longer such an obvious class-leader. But I'm in no rush whatsoever to swap mine for some other device or OS that I then have to get used to. Let's celebrate the fact that there is now a wide variety of pretty good products out there, but also give credit to Apple for redefining what we all expect from a 'phone'. I remember that when I bought the original iPhone most people baulked at how big and heavy it was: at the time phones had been getting smaller and smaller, lighter and more plasticky. And nobody imagined what you could possibly need a big screen for, or why you would want to carry around such a large device. Now, we've all got them...
And the iPhone seems to considered to be too small... I wouldn't argue with Damo and he clearly speaks from experience. But really, I have no interest in phones, don't need that many apps on it, so the half a million on the iTunes Store is fine by me. I just want the think to work - it's not a toy as far as I'm concerned. The only thing that annoys me is Apple's dedication to planned obsolescence. It's just not possible that a fast phone becomes a slow phone just because you change the OS unless you put something in it to slow it down. Apple do have a vested interest in using their software to make you dissatisfied with your current hardware so that you buy more of it. But for people with no interest in gadgets, the Mac, iPhone, iPad combination is hard to beat in terms of fairly seamless operation.
These are the issues for me. I have tried Samsung and Kies with Windows and it is clunky. I have battled with various versions of Windows since Win 3.1 and dabbled with Android. Once upon a time I would have championed the idea behind open source software, and still like it in principle, but it produces crap software that doesn't work seamlessly on different hardware. I want something that just works, not because I can't make stuff work, generally I can, but because I can't just be bothered. I have been using an iPad for almost two years and a Mac Mini since last year and they do just work (Time Machine is very good), who cares what is under the bonnet. I haven't been with Apple long enough to experience planned obsolescence of OS's and it is a concern, I am not an early adopter who updates regularly, it has taken me a long time to return to Apple after the fiascos with battery longevity in iPods many years ago. I almost bought an iPhone 4S the other day on impulse, believing it to be a bargain, today I realise it wasn't and am very glad I didn't. Thanks everyone for the input.
One of the key 'ownership package' points of apple equipment is their far higher retained value. You pay more initially but it's worth more a couple of years down the line. I've got the full apple range - iPod iPhone iPad and Mac, they all work superbly and all have tangible resale value. If I'd have bought a generic MP3 player, an android phone and tablet and a PC of the same value all would be completely worthless now. You pays your money and takes your choice.
