New iPhones. Cheaper iPhones. Free iPhones. But hey, where’s the iPhone 5?

At Apple’s Cupertino campus, the long-awaited iPhone event finally happened. While CEO Tim Cook unveiled a number of refreshed gadgets, one thing was noticeably missing: the iPhone 5. Looks like we all got it wrong.

Nonetheless, Apple did debut the iPhone 4S, something people will likely be flocking to Apple stores en masse for. Here are some highlights of this new device:

• The iPhone 4S looks largely the same as the iPhone 4, but its insides are very different. Let’s start with the camera. The smartphone is capable of shooting 1080p hi-def videos and has real-time video image stabilization and temporal noise reduction. Its 8-megapixel camera shoots at f2.4 — impressive for a smartphone camera — and takes lightning-fast photos at about a second for the first shot and half a second for subsequent ones.
• Now everyone can have a personal assistant they can bark commands at. Siri can tell you today’s weather, search Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha, look up contacts, find restaurants for you and much more in English, French and German. It’ll start at beta as Apple adds more languages and services.
• Data can download twice as fast thanks to Enhanced Uplink. Theoretically, the phone can download 14.4 megabits per second.
• Even with a dual-core CPU — up to seven times faster than the current iPhone 4 — battery life is at eight hours of continuous talking.
• The iPhone 4S comes in 16, 32 and 64 gigabytes, priced at $199, $299 and $399, respectively. The iPhone 4 is now 8 gigabytes, priced at $99. And the iPhone 3GS, at 8 gigs, will come free with a new two-year contract. Preorders begin Oct. 7, and the phones will be available beginning Oct. 14.

Not the iPhone 5 everyone was expecting, but still pretty nifty. Still, the audience at Cupertino was reported “underwhelmed”. (Maybe they would’ve been more excited if the iPhone 4S was renamed the iPhone 5.) Still, we’ll likely see those infamous Apple store lines and the drama that accompanies them.

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