It’s October 4th 2011 today, which means one thing and one thing only: that Apple officially announced the next iteration of the iPhone at the “Let’s Talk iPhone” event! They call it the 4S, and it looks the same, but it now has the A5 chip with dual-core CPU and GPU. The upshot is an iPhone that’s twice as fast with 7x faster graphics (that S might just stand for speed). There’s also an improved twin-antenna system where both can switch themselves between sending and receiving data. That, combined with the A5, means download speeds are twice as fast, too.

The other major new features are a bigger, better-in-every-way 8 megapixel camera with 5-element optics and a huge 2.4-stop aperture; 1080p HD video recording; and of course improvements to the apps and algorithms allowing for better colour-correction, white-balance and in-phone photo and video editing and sharing.

In addition, the 4S has more battery life; fully-integrated Airplay, iCloud and iOS5; and maybe most importantly of all, a built-in, “humble personal assistant” called Siri that does everything according to your voice-commands. No word yet on whether she will refuse to help you download smut.

The 4S comes in 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB versions and is available in both black and white. Check out all the details on the Apple site.