Hands on review: Apple iPhone 4S

With one million pre-orders and consumers queuing through the night for the new iPhone 4S there is no doubt Apple has once again managed to entice and excite the public with its latest device.

V3 managed to get its hand on an iPhone 4S and, ahead of a full and in-depth review next week, put the device through its paces to note some first-thoughts on the touted changes.

Certainly the hardware and software changes have delivered some notable improvements.

One of the most obvious is the Safari web browser which now supports tabbed browsing and features an improved rendering engine to make browsing much faster.

On our Vodafone 3G connection there was a clear improvement in bringing up web pages, which was both faster and smoother.

Similarly, the camera upgrade is a big improvement, with the lens bumped up from five megapixels on the iPhone 4 to eight megapixels on the 4S, which Apple claims "might be the best camera ever on a phone", although many other smartphones have the same quality lens.

The video camera can shoot in HD 1080p rather than HD 720p, and it has added video stabilisation that the iPhone 4 camera doesn't have.

We took a few snaps in the office on both an iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S. Pictures taken on the iPhone 4S definitely look clearer and better defined at long range although at short range we didn't notice a huge difference.

One of the key things with the iPhone 4S that Apple has touted is the inclusion of an A5 dual-core chip which is a clear upgrade from the single core A4 processor in the iPhone 4.

Apple claims it can deliver up to twice the power and seven times faster graphics - we haven't been able to test these claims as of yet but we'll certainly do so in an in-depth review next week.