Do I want the iPhone 4s?

The only iPhone I haven’t owned is the original. I bought the iPhone 4 right before heading back to school as my last major purchase. So now I’m in school and actually have to think if the new phone is worth buying. Assuming of course current iPhone users can buy a little early (my AT&T discount is scheduled for early Dec.).

I’ll hit the new features that have caught my eye …

Faster download speeds – I haven’t had much issue with my connection being too slow but I’m not going to argue against a doubling in download speed.

Dual-core – Again, not a big issue on my phone with speed. On occasion it seems to get bogged down, but nothing that is driving me crazy. Nothing will be as bad as that awful iPhone 3G.

RAM – All the rumors had this being updated. It certainly needs to go to 1gb, it would be awful to constrict this processor with limited RAM.

Camera – I’m not going crazy over a new camera. I guess the few times I use my iPhone camera, I’d like the best quality I can get. Although at some point perhaps it will mean I leave my point-and-shoot at home more often. Although its the zooming that keeps me using a real camera. I’ll throw video in 1080p here too. I’ve never taken video with my phone. I should, but I haven’t.

Airplay Mirroring – Sounds promising, but not sure how often I’d use it. Most cases I see using it, such as sharing pictures on the TV, wouldn’t be at home making the presence of an AppleTV less likely and I’d have to have remembered my HDMI cable.

Siri – Well, Hello there Siri. I watched the videos and the computer-y voice makes it sound a little less cool than I imagined. Still, it’s pretty impressive, tech-wise. But would I use it? It looks to be very useful in the car to operate it. But I’m not in my car enough for that to be helpful. However, if it reads text messages, and the audio comes over Bluetooth Audio (I’ve been using that a lot in the car), I’d like that very much. The one example I did think I’d use a lot is setting the alarm via voice. I’ll be curious to see what other Apps can do with it over the next few releases.

Auto-Switching Antenna – Interesting. I don’t have a ton of coverage issues, but there are times when my connection stumbles.

Battery – The comparisons show an increase in battery life for 3G calls, with everything else being the same. Still, a little less drain when on the phone is handy. It won’t be a dramatic, noticeably improvement, but it will be there.

Things I do want:
32gb – I have 10gb of apps on my phone. Add in podcasts and music (Spotify at the moment) and I barely have any room for pictures. If the 32gb version would have been lowered to $199, I’d be buying without all these other considerations.
White – I would have bought the white iPhone 4 had it been out.

What I wanted:
Bigger Screen – Not crazy bigger, but a little more.
LTE – I wasn’t expecting it, but this will be needed, likely before the next iPhone comes out.

iOS 5
This might really be all I want. New notifications! iMessage! (Although, it should be on the Mac too.) Wi-Fi Syncing! Reminders. (No !, but has potential with the Siri examples.) It will be like a new phone.

iCloud
Get back to me. As I’ve said before, I should already have these features but iOS is too locked down.

Do I buy it? I’ll let you know, I’m glad I have until Friday to decide.