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Home / News / iPhone 4 cases won’t fit the iPhone 4S

iPhone 4 cases won’t fit the iPhone 4S

Think you can just whack your new iPhone 4S in old iPhone 4 goods? Think again

When the curtain was pulled back on the shiny new iPhone 4S last week, its lack of a hardware upgrade led many (including us) to believe everything on the outside was EXACTLY the same as before. Turns out we were wrong. While we were prevented from comparing the iPhone 4 with its 4S successor at the launch, those stealthy folks over at Android Sale were able to put them side-by-side for a quick comparison.

So, if you turn your attention to acute and direct your gaze to the picture above, you’ll notice a very minor shift in the positioning of the silent switch and volume controls. We might have expected as much; the same tweak could be seen on the US-only CDMA iPhone 4 made for the Verizon network.

The (obvious) bad news? If you slot the iPhone 4S into your favourite iPhone 4-tailored case, the buttons will be misaligned. The difference may only be a matter of millimetres, but the cheeky revelation means if you’re planning on bagging yourself the iPhone 4S this Friday, you might want to put aside a bit of spare change for a replacement case that’s been specifically designed to accommodate this ever-so-slight shift.

And you didn’t think Apple made any cosmetic changes?

Also

Apple iPhone 4S review

iPhone 4S – all the stories

Apple iPhone 4S Siri demo

Apple iPhone 4S pre-sales are off to an impressive start

Profile image of Dan Grabham Dan Grabham Editor-in-Chief

About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home