The iPhone 4S is a great-looking device, but the glass back makes me hide that gorgeous design with a case just to make sure it doesn't shatter. The display is very sharp and crisp with good contrast and viewing angles, but it's small - tiny by today's standards; the iPhone 5's display is better, though it's still a bit too small. The rear-facing camera is fantastic, even for printing pictures for an album, but the front-facing camera did not impress me. I haven't had any problems with reception and call quality; every once in a while, I do make a phone call, and it works well enough even inside my house, which is notorious for awful signal; there is no LTE in my country, so that doesn't matter to me at all. Performance is very good; it's no slouch, it runs games like Real Racing 3 very smoothly. iOS is very easy to use, but I do wish it was more complex - without JailBreaking, of course. Battery life is generally okay - I can get through a 7:00-15:00 day of moderate-to-heavy usage with around 40% left, but on the rare occasions that I'm far from a charger until 19:00 or later, I make using it a major inconvenience - turning off WiFi, 3G, GPS, turning down the brightness, etc. As usual with Apple products, the ecosystem is great, both hardware and software, with the huge iTunes media-store and App Store, as well as the infinite amount of accessories available.
The Breakdown
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Design
8
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Display
8
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Camera(s)
9
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Reception / call quality
10
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Performance
9
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Software
8
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Battery life
7
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Ecosystem
10
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