Apple launched the iPhone 4S yesterday. The new phone is a very significant upgrade from the previous version, and almost everything was improved: camera, battery life, reception, operating system, processor, price, you name it. Sounds like a lot to keep consumers and investors happy, right? Unfortunately not. Simply because the new phone is not called iPhone 5.

You might ask: why didn't Apple name it iPhone 5 then? Because the exterior is exaclty the same. And it should be! It is a gorgeous design that needs no update. For now. But Apple was the one that created this trap, by releasing a different version each year and naming the phones with sequential numbers.

That's not the case with new cars. Every year there is a new model for every car, but they sell it as the year model, not a sequencial number. And that's enough to keep people happy. The Audi A3 is an example of a beautifuly designed car that needed no change on the outside for many years. And the feature changes introduced every year were certainly not as significant as the ones Apple announced yesterday. But customers would be happy, just because they had the 20XX version of the car.

Is an iPhone 5 still to come this year? I doubt. Apple would not waste all the media attention yesteday if they had something significant to launch before Christmas. But who am I to say? I have no inside information and use a Nexus S. What I know is that the new 4S looks very impressive, and will likely continue to push the competition further so we can have better and cheaper devices every year.