While the unfortunately passing of Steve Jobs on Wednesday has overshadowed the unveiling of iPhone 4S a day earlier, Apple's latest smartphone becomes available in Canada on Oct. 14, with prices starting at $159 on a 3-year plan.

Yours truly attended the launch event at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. and while many were disappointed it wasn't a radically redesigned iPhone 5, don't write off the iPhone 4S until you test-drive the amazing Siri voice-activated "personal assistant" feature and slew of hardware updates.

Here's the scoop on what you can expect from iPhone 4S, whether you're considering it for business or pleasure, or in all likelihood, a bit of both.

The iPhone 4S is powered by Apple’s dual-core A5 chip, comparable to what's in the iPad 2 touchscreen tablet, so users can expect roughly twice the speed and better graphics performance over the iPhone 4. I launched a few apps, played some video and games and flicked through the web browser and noticed a major difference right off the bat.

Wireless speeds are reportedly faster, too, thanks to a dual-antenna design – a first for smartphones, says Apple. We're pretty spoiled in Canada with our fast and reliable networks, but our friends south of the border should also experience better reception and fewer dropped calls.

As a camera, the iPhone 4S took some impressive stills and videos from my initial testing at the Apple campus, thanks to its 8-megapixel sensor (compared to five with the iPhone 4), 1080p HD video recording (compared to 720p) and overall better optics technology. If you're interested, more details on the souped-up camera is available here.

But as I teased near the beginning of this article, the most impressive feature built into iPhone 4S is Siri, a female-sounding assistant that’s activate when you press and hold the Home button (or put the iPhone 4S up to your ear). Simply ask a question or give a command you'll immediately get a relevant response. You can ask "what's the weather in Vancouver?" and Siri will launch a weather app with details. Tell Siri you want to book a meeting at 12pm tomorrow and she might tell you there's already an appointment at that time. I said "take me to the Golden Gate Bridge" and it immediately opened the Maps application and showed me the route. I also asked "who won the 1985 Stanley Cup?" and it opened Safari to show me it was the Edmonton Oilers. "What good Chinese food restaurants are in San Jose?," I queried, and it quickly showed me a list, ranked by rating.

There's more to this voice-activated artificial intelligence. You can have your text messages spoken to you, as well. Reply, and you’ll see your words transcribed back into text before you send it. You can ask the definition of a word and it'll show it to you via its built-in dictionary. Or tap a microphone icon when composing an email and it'll type it out for you (but emails aren't read to you, though).

The "S" in iPhone 3S might stand for "speed," but I'd like to think it's for "Siri," as this is the killer app that'll likely have everyone buzzing.

Also keep in mind iPhone 4S will come preloaded with the latest operating system update, iOS 5. I had a chance to test a few of 200-odd new features on the iPhone 4S at the unveiling, including the BBM-like iMessage app, plus Reminders, Newsstand and Notification Centre. The smartphone will also work with the new iCloud service for easy uploading, synchronization and access to your content – contacts, calendar entries, documents, apps, photo, music, ebooks and more – on a number of devices, anywhere you've got a cellular or Wi-Fi connection.

Sure, the iPhone 4S might've disappointed those expecting a major leap forward rather than an iterative update over last year's model. But as with all Apple products, the devil is in the details, which you only "get" once you start playing around with the device for a while.