The iPhone 4S might look the same as the iPhone 4, but looks can be deceiving -- there's some potent new chunks of tech hidden inside its unassuming casing, and one of those shiny new components is an 8-megapixel camera.
Apple is making a big fuss of the new snapper inside the 4S, touting face detection, backside illumination (arf!), f2.4 aperture, the ability to capture snaps at a 3,264x2,448-pixel resolution and 1080p video recording as reasons to upgrade.
But is that a bunch of bluff, or is this camera worth splashing out for? Flick through our photos above to observe some test shots, taken on a sunny day in London, which should settle whether this new blower can trump its predecessor in the camera stakes.
We've also got short test videos of the same scene shot on both the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 just below, for your screwy-eyed scrutiny.
Impressive
We were extremely impressed by the iPhone 4S' abilities, both in terms of still photography and when it came to video. The iPhone 4S handles colours delicately, with hues coming through looking very natural, much more so than they will on the iPhone 4's 5-megapixel camera.
The clarity in images is very impressive. Zooming in on a close-up photo will reveal loads of minute detail in every shot, and there's the potential to get some ace depth-of-field effects -- impressive for such a little snapper.
Video, meanwhile, is crisp and full of colour. We noticed some rolling shutter -- that's the effect that makes it look as though your video is wobbling like jelly when the camera moves, but it's not ruinous. There's the potential to get some great footage off this phone.
The iPhone 4S has another advantage over its older brother -- a more powerful processor in the form of an A5 chip. The extra grunt that chip affords caused the 4S to excel in our benchmark tests, and it makes taking photo after photo a speedy affair, with very little lag when you fire up the camera app, or finish recording a chunk of video.
All things considered, we judge this is a significant improvement over the iPhone 4's camera, and that was already rather spiffing. But with few other standout features, we're not sure there's much reason to upgrade to the iPhone 4S if you already own an iPhone 4.
Have you bought an iPhone 4S? What are your thoughts on the camera? Let us know down in the comments, or on our Facebook wall.
Android App 
RSS Feeds 
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
24 month contract
24 month contract
Comments 4
Add your comment
anonymous 15 October, 2011 22:22
1080p for all video? I'm not to happy about this... A minute "clip" is pushing 300MB! So if I record one song at a concert, I can be at 1GB easily for one clip. This is not practical at all. Not only can I not take as many videos on my vacation now due to space constrains on the 16GB model, but it takes almost a minute and a half to load the minute video into airplay. There has to be an option to reduce the size of the video. It's out of control at 1080p!
anonymous 16 October, 2011 12:37
Really , if you want a 8megapixel camera just go out and buy a frigging 8 MEGAPIXEL camera!
Seriously, only the apple fanboys would buy the 4s, apple is probably laughing at you all because they have ran out of ideas for their precious iphone.
anonymous 16 October, 2011 17:45
Ha ha, seriously someone could laugh at a fandroid comments like the one above :)
Say's it doesn't matter what mpx camera is, because if you need a camera go and buy friging camera (and i can't dissagre) but on the other side, if Apple did not bring the 8mpx camera on the Iphone 4s.... it would be laughing and telling us how android OS running phones have had 8mpx for years and Apple is stucked on 5MPX , on which case, sure.... camera would matter quite a lot.
anonymous 17 October, 2011 07:16
Apple surely has NOT run out of ideas to put on their new phone its just not practical or fair to release a totally new version of their phone every year, When a telephone company's contract usually lasts for as long as 2 years. They release one every year instead for the fanboys and people who have not bought an iphone yet. this way they collect revenue every year. If they were to release a brand new model every year many people would just skip a model and they would have wasted their ideas and wasted money buying more expensive hardware etc.