Apple iPhone 4S Review

Introduction

That’s the exact point of this review: to give you a better idea where the iPhone 4S stacks up against similar ultracompact camcorders. By the way, if you’re curious about the phone’s still image performance, check out this full-length iPhone 4S review at our sister-site, DigitalCameraInfo.com.

The iPhone 4S is available in black or white and with three different amounts of internal memory. The $199 model comes with 16GB of internal memory; for $299 you get 32GB of internal memory; and the 64GB model costs $399. All these prices are contingent on signing a two-year cell phone contract with AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint. Apple also sells “unlocked” versions of the phone that aren’t tied to a specific cell phone carrier for an additional $450 (for a total of $649 – $849 dollars per phone).

Design & Usability

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The phone doesn’t handle perfectly as a camcorder, but the touchscreen LCD was a pleasure to work with.

Since the iPhone 4S wasn’t designed as a camcorder, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it doesn’t handle all that well as a camcorder. The phone fits fine in your hand… as a phone. But when you hold it to shoot video, you’ll find there is very little to grip onto. Worst of all, the lens is positioned in such a way that it is very easy to slip a finger over it by accident (not to mention the built-in mic is very easy to cover with your palm). It's not fair to say these issues stem from shoddy design on Apple's part, it's just that Apple's priorities for the iPhone 4S were to design it as a phone first.

Here's a confusing tidbit about the phone: the iPhone 4S can record video when holding the phone either vertically or horizontally, but once you start recording the aspect ratio of your video will remain the same throughout the clip. So, if you start out recording with the phone horizontally, your entire video will be 16:9 widescreen (like a normal movie). If you start out recording vertically, the video clip will have an odd 9:16 aspect ratio—a very tall and slim video clip. Again, the aspect ratios don’t change when you rotate the phone during recording.

The autofocus system on the iPhone 4S may drive a few people batty, as it does require some user input in order to change focus during recording. This means you can’t simply point and shoot if you want to keep a moving subject in focus—you’ll have to tap on the screen in order to change the focus setting, although the phone then updates the focus automatically (it’s not like you have to adjust dials or press buttons repeatedly). It’s a simple “spot focus” system, but users who want a completely automated experience may find it annoying

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Features

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The iPhone has plenty of unique features, including two lenses and wireless connectivity.

Did you know the iPhone 4S actually has two lenses? Yup, in addition to the lens on the back of the camcorder—the main lens used for recording video and taking photos—there's an even smaller lens on the back of the camcorder. This lens is mainly used for the phone's FaceTime video chat function, but it can also be used to do self recordings as well. While the main lens can record full HD video, the FaceTime lens is limited to standard definition 640 x 480 recording.

The fact that the iPhone can connect to WiFi hotspots, as well as transmit data using your cell phone provider’s 3G network, makes the phone an invaluable tool for quickly uploading video content to the internet. Uploading videos works best if you’re connected to a wireless network, but it is possible to upload video over 3G as well. To upload to YouTube, you simply open a clip in playback mode, press the share button, and three options pop up on screen: email video, message (as an MMS text message), or send to YouTube. Clicking the YouTube option brings up a page where you enter your YouTube login information, and then you can adjust settings before uploading the video. You can add a video title, description, choose between an SD or HD upload, add tags, select a category, and publish the video as public, unlisted, or private. The title, description, tag, and category fields must be filled out in order to publish to YouTube.The process is incredibly easy, and once the upload is complete you can view the video on YouTube right on your phone! A box also pops up allowing you to email a link for the video to friends.

Of course, the iPhone 4S can also take decent still photos, but I won’t get into the full details of its photo capabilities, as our sister-site DigitalCameraInfo.com did a full review of the phone’s photographic features and performance. All I will say here is that the iPhone 4S can capture 8-megapixel stills, has a built-in flash (also functions as a video light), and it can’t take photos during video recording. There’s also a grid feature and a special HDR setting that has the camera layer three photos together to create a single photo with better exposure levels (HDR stands for high dynamic range).

Performance

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Based on our variety of tests, as well as real-life shooting experiments, we feel the Apple iPhone 4S is better than most (if not all) of the budget ultracompact camcorders on the market. The iPhone 4S is the first phone from Apple to include a full HD 1080p record mode, and the addition of that mode helped make the 4S capable of recording much sharper images than previous iPhones. Is the phone better than a $500 camcorder? No, certainly not. And if you're looking for top-notch image quality then this phone won't satisfy your video needs.

Conclusion

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Better performance and way better features than most camcorders under $200.

The iPhone 4S has plenty of benefits that make it a more versatile and entirely superior device to any budget camcorder you can find. Its wireless features make sharing videos a breeze—and you don’t ever have to connect the phone to a computer to do so. The LCD on the phone is large, responsive, and makes recorded video clips look great due to its excellent resolution (far better than your average budget camcorder’s LCD). The iPhone 4S is also very easy to use, with an intuitive interface that, while having a few quirks, is easy to figure out overall.

The iPhone doesn’t have any advanced video controls, which is one thing it lacks compared to certain budget camcorders, but the amount of third-party apps that are capable of enhancing the phone’s video mode are plentiful. Apple even has a version of iMovie available for the iPhone, so by spending an extra 4.99 at the app store you can get a robust built-in editing program on your phone.

When you take into consideration the cost of a two-year cell phone plan, the iPhone 4S is a very expensive gadget. If all you want to do is record video, you should probably save yourself several hundred dollars and buy a cheap budget camcorder instead. If you already own an iPhone 4S, however, or you’re planning to get one, you can rest assured that the phone has a good video function that's capable of recording video on par with what that of a $200 camcorder.

Science Introduction

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The Apple iPhone 4S didn't blow everything away with its video performance, but its image quality was as good (if not better) than any camcorder we've reviewed for under $200. Across the board, the iPhone 4S put up decent numbers in our tests, with the phone showing no major weaknesses as a camcorder. Low light video looked fine, colors were fairly accurate, battery life was good, and motion and sharpness were respectable. Again, the iPhone 4S isn't the best performer ever, but its plethora of excellent features, along with its decent image quality, make it a better camcorder than your average pocket-cam.

Low Light Performance

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Not quite as good as the best budget cams we've seen, but low light performance was solid overall.

The Apple iPhone 4S required 8 lux of light to record an image that is bright enough to be used on broadcast television. That’s a good performance for the iPhone, but it represents no change from the previous generation. Since ultracompact, budget camcorders like the iPhone 4S use fixed lenses with wide aperture settings, they usually do a very good job in this test. This does not mean they have better low light performance than more expensive camcorders. Cheap models do record bright video in low light, but it isn’t as sharp or crisp as a good mid-range or high-end HD model. Still, compared to other camcorders in its class, the iPhone 4S did quite well in this test.

Noise levels were decent in our low light test, with the phone averaging around 1.3% noise. But these numbers aren’t quite as good as what you can get from the best budget camcorders. Even the iPhone 3GS had slightly less noise in its its image. Colors captured by the iPhone 4S, however, looked great in low light. The 4S measured a color error of 4.25 and a saturation level of 119% in this test.

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Motion & Sharpness

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Motion looked surprisingly smooth, despite the camcorder's use of a 30p frame rate.

Motion captured by the iPhone 4S looked surprisingly smooth, despite the fact that the phone uses a 30p frame rate when recording video (30p frame rates will occasionally produce more blur and choppiness than 60i or 60p frame rates). The video also looked crisp without much noticeable artifacting. The only bad sign was some noticeable fringing around rotating wheels in our test. The phone also showed an average amount of blur and trailing, but nothing worse than what budget camcorders normally display.

Since the iPhone 4S records Full HD video (at a 1920 × 1080 resolution), the phone did far better in our sharpness test than the older iPhone 3GS we tested a couple years ago (the 3GS topped out with a 1280 × 720 video resolution). In our testing, the iPhone 4S managed a horizontal sharpness of 625 LW/PH and a vertical sharpness of 575 LW/PH. Compare that to the iPhone 3GS, which managed 500 LW/PH horizontal and just 375 LW/PH vertical. That's a significant improvement for the 4S.

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Battery Life

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Not quite as potent as the previous iPhone, but the battery still lasted longer than most other budget camcorders.

There’s been plenty of talk about the diminished battery life on the iPhone 4S, but our test found the phone was able to record video continuously for over 140 minutes. This is 13 minutes less than the iPhone 3G was able to record video for, but it’s still a good 20 to 30 minutes longer than most budget camcorders are able to record for on a single charge. We can’t attest to the phone’s battery life for other things, like phone calls or internet use, but for video recording the 4S seems to have fine battery life.

Like all iPhones, the battery on the iPhone 4S is not removable and is built into the phone’s body. The phone does warm up a bit after a lot of continual use, but the heat wasn’t excessive. Most camcorders we test actually get warmer than the iPhone 4S did during our battery test.

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