OK, I know aboslutely nothing about iPhones, but Elaine is a mac user and needs a new phone. She is really not a power user, so a basic smartphone would be more than enough. Is there any reason not to go for the 4S (seems to be the most basic model), and would it make sense to buy one in the US rather than in Europe?

Do not get a 4S, get a 5c* or a 5s. The iPhone basically doubles in speed with each new release.

* the 5c is basically an iPhone 5 in a different case and is twice the speed of the 4S, the 5s is twice the speed again

I don't know if it is different in Holland, but the price differences between the different models generations isn't massive (ok, so I'm not claiming it is small either). In the UK, SIM free from Apple:

4S £349
5c £469
5s £549

And on contract, with O2 for example it is an extra £5 a month to go from the 4S to the 5c and another extra £5 for the 5s.

So unless you really can't afford the extra £120, going with the slower older 4S would be unwise.

Importantly the 5c/5s also have double the RAM of the 4S and the cameras are quite a bit better.

And one final factor, the 4S you'll find available now is typically the one with 8GB of storage, which really isn't enough nowadays (those prices I listed were for an 8GB 4S and 16GB for the others). As is the case with the majority of smartphones nowadays, the storage is not upgradable.

I have a 4S and a love it, and I see no reason to get the more expensive 5 model at this time.

The biggest difference between the 4S and the 5 series is the docking/charging connector plug. The 5 uses a brand-new plug design.

The new plug design isn't an issue for her because she's starting from scratch: She doesn't have a ton of existing charger cables squirreled away all over the house/work/suitcase/laptop/desk/bedroom like I do, and doesn't have a custom hand-made car dock using the older plug design like I do. Me, I'm sticking with the 4S as long as I can so I don't have to throw away all my existing infrastructure.

The 5 series does have some minor technical improvements, but I'm not convinced those improvements are worth the extra money right now. The 4S is great.

One problem with the 4S is that, if you buy one new from Apple, you can't easily get the one with a lot of disk space. I got one with 64GB of space, back when it was the newest model (and spent a pretty penny doing so), but now, if you want to get a 4S because they're the cheap "last year's model" now, you can't get a 64GB model, they only sell the smaller models now.

The disk space is necessary to store downloaded apps, pictures/videos you take with the phone's camera, and iPod songs. If she wants all her music on the phone, look at how big her MP3 collection is right now and see if the existing model will suffice.

(Wow, remember when the Empeg was the only thing with enough storage to store your whole music collection? )

Thanks to you both for some good advice!



All too well...

Is she just looking for a 'mobile phone' or a high quality mobile computer with Internet connectivity?

iPhones do indeed make telephone calls. That is not what makes them wonderful. It is the apps, the responsive user interface and reliability of the integrated capabilities that make it an iPhone.

The 5 series are all slimmer and less heavy than the 4 series. The screen is a tad larger/taller and for many females they seem to find the newer/thinner shape to be easier to handle.

Personally I would not choose a model below the iPhone 5 level. Apple is sure to continue refining and upgrading the OS and it is to be expected that it will work more smoothly on the newer hardware.

Must it be new? The iPhone 5 was only sold by Apple for one model year, then replaced with the current iPhone 5C which is essentially an iPhone 5 innards with slight refinements, and a plastic colorful back. That makes the iPhone 5 about the same as the 5C in terms of future proofness.

If you want lots of storage capacity then you must either buy used or buy the 5S new from Apple.

The 4S is the last iPhone model with the old style 30-pin connector. The 5 series all use the much more modern Lightning connector, as do all the full size iPads and the new iPad Mini models.

Now that I have only Lightning connector iDevices the 30-pin connector just seems so old, clunky and somewhat fussy/fragile. I have an adapter for the one car that integrates using the old connector.

Skip the 4S. Out of the box it's 2 years old now. (If Apple's trends continue) It will see an update to iOS 8 late next fall, then fall off the update wagon. iOS 8 on the 4S will be slimmed down and not be likely to have all the new features. There is a slim chance though Apple bumps the 4S off the support wagon with the current release.

The 5/5c will see major OS upgrades likely out to iOS 9 in late 2015, or the 5s out to iOS 10 in late 2016.

As for the 5/5c vs the 5s. it depends on her use case. Does she like to take photos? If so, the added 10fps burst mode and auto "good" photo selection of the 5s may appeal to her. As would the more natural lighting flash on the 5s. I'll be helping a family member jump from the 4S to the 5s here soon solely based on the camera improvements.

Storage wise, keep in mind that you can have less on the device if iTunes Match is used. All of Elaine's music would live in the cloud, and could be played anywhere she has a data connection. And Music can be pulled down from Match and cached locally on the device. This service is an extra ($/€)24.99 a year.

The 4s is still a current model on the Apple web page, I'd hope they support it more than 6 months.

If you bought a 4S now and if Apple only supported it until iOS 8, that would still mean it would be on the current version until probably fall 2015. A lot more than six months.

Even if Apple keep selling the 4S until iOS8 comes out, that still means one bought next fall would be on the latest version of iOS for a year.

I'm using a 3GS and am reasonably happy with it. Plus, you can get a used one fully unlocked for about $75-$80. Caveats are that there are several apps that I can't use and I'm maxed out on IOS 6. Most of the apps I can't use are games, so no deal-breakers so far. It's a little sluggish at times, but not terrible. Still faster than some of the Android phones I've used. It works fine for phone, casual internet browsing, most apps and music and the occasional video. The camera sucks so bad as to be almost useless except in perfect natural light (no flash). On the plus side, I don't bother having a bulky case because at that price, it's basically disposable if I manage to destroy it.

Take that review with a giant grain of salt though. Perhaps my satisfaction is somewhat linked to falling off the edge of the tech world and living in the jungle for almost four years.

I have just gone from the 4S to the 5S.

Certainly the 5S is a great phone and I love it. For my uses I'm not sure the extra speed and memory gets used that much. I use it for TomTom and email mainly. But even as a non-power iPhone user I still think the stretch to the 5S would be worth it.

The finger print unlock seems like a gimmick until you have used it for a while. Now every time I pick up a device I get annoyed when it does't unlock with my finger print. It is one of those nice features that isn't all singing and dancing but is really really nice and even works too !!!

The camera is much better, the super slomo 120fps 720p video is actually really amazing. The flash has been improved a lot with this version. It's still a camera phone of course, but a very nice one.

So even as a regular user I would suggest the 5S would be a better option, unless she loves bright colours and plastic in which case go for the 5C but as others have pointed out the price difference isn't all that.

Cheers

Cris

OK, will have to look at US prices of unlocked 5S's.

I'd suggest the 5S just for forward compatibility. I don't think anyone is going to make a lot of 30-pin accessories much longer...

Make sure you factor in this: https://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/

There are multiple models of the iPhone to support various LTE bands. Buying an unlocked US model (A1533) would mean no LTE support anywhere in Europe. Model A1457 has support for LTE across most of the continent there.

Ugh. I wonder if we'll ever get to a time where we don't have to worry about crap like that.

(btw, naturally I'm not blaming Apple here, just the carriers and anyone else responsible for this stuff)

+1

I was under the impression that the main reason you end up with a range of different models to deal with LTE was technical/regulatory rather than any nonsense from the carriers.

I thought it was down to the fact that supporting a wide range of frequencies without adding lots of extra antennas and power amplifiers was still problematic ?

(this is different from the silliness you get on the Android side where a single model of phone ends up with completely different CPUs and other hardware in different parts of the world or just on different carriers)

The problem here is the number of bands; GSM was only ever on 4 frequencies (850, 900, 1800, 1900); you had a high and a low band antenna, and a combo PA which - if it wasn't using the same PA silicon - integrated both high and low band PAs in one package. Then came WCDMA; you added more PAs (one per band, as you couldn't make a wideband one good enough back then), widened your antenna switch a bit, and tweaked the high band antenna to be a bit wider for 2100 and all was well for a bit. The other 3G bands, besides 1700 that T-Mo USA used, were all still addressable by your current antennas.

Then came LTE. Being that lots of LTE frequency allocations were little nuggets released from other services (TV amongst others), and the inability to recycle the 2G/3G bands meant that there are a LOT of totally new bands. They go lower and higher than the old low band/high band antennas, and then there are the ones in the middle. Given the complex modulation schemes, the PA requirements are tight and hence you end up with even more PAs (though thankfully now the 3G PAs are mostly multiband capable so you get a little bit of room back).

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks

The antenna guys had to get even more creative at this point; I'm pretty sure the later apple phones have dynamically tunable antennas (ie they alter the effective length to suit the band in use)... but there's only so much room on a phone so even the 5S doesn't support everything in one model.

The new iPads are a single worldwide model - which is pretty amazing and I think may even be a first for an LTE device.