Despite early grumbling about how it was unveiled, users of Apple’s iPhone 4S are overwhelmingly satisfied with the smartphone, ranking the Siri voice-recognition system as their favorite feature. At 96 percent satisfaction, the iPhone 4S is Apple’s most popular handset, besting even the iPhone 4.
According to a ChangeWave Research survey, 77 percent of owners say they are “very satisfied” and 19 percent are “somewhat satisfied” with the iPhone 4S. Only 2 percent of the 215 iPhone 4S owners said they were “unsatisfied” with the Apple device. This compares with 72 percent of iPhone 4 users that were “very satisfied” in a June 2010 survey.
The top three iPhone 4S features most liked were Siri, ease of use and the 8-megapixel camera with LED flash, garnering 49 percent, 39 percent and 33 percent respectively. Apple’s highly-touted iCloud service ranked as the sixth most-liked feature of the new iPhone, capturing 19 percent of consumers’ attention. Faster Web browsing and the iPhone 4S screen resolution were listed as more popular than the cloud-based storage option, according to researchers.
A battery life seen as “too short” was listed as the top gripe of iPhone 4S owners, registered by 38 percent of survey participants. The lack of 4G capability ranked as the second most common complaint, followed by screen size. Researchers said just 8 percent of iPhone 4S owners view the battery issue as a “very big problem,” while 20 percent see a short battery life as “somewhat of a problem.” The ChangeWave survey, conducted between Nov. 2-9, was completed shortly before Apple updated iOS 5 to address the iPhone 4S battery problem, among other issues.
The iPhone 4S noted marked improvement in the number of dropped calls, compared to the iPhone 4. Only 2.5 percent of iPhone 4S owners reported frequent dropped connections versus 5.2 percent of iPhone 4 users in July 2010. Digging into the numbers, ChangeWave found iPhone 4S owners using Verizon experienced just 1.3 percent dropped calls compared to 4.1 percent of iPhone 4S users on AT&T.
