I'm not sure if this is on-topic. So feel free to close it or suggest re-wording. But I figure the look of a product does affect the user perception which is why I'm posting it here.
So I was browsing though ebay the other day and I noticed that the 3gs looks ancient compared to the 4.
Aside from the obvious fact that well, the 3gs is older, I just want to point out that these two phones are only a year apart. It's not like looking at a 20 year old and wondering why it doesn't compare to today's car.
Also, they're pretty similar - they're the same size, they're both black - aside from curved corners, there's not that much difference
So why is it that the 3gs looks older? Is this just classically conditioning? Because the media campaigns have just trained me to remember that the "iphone 4" look looks more modern than the iphone 3gs and that if apple were to have released the iphone 4 model first, then the 3gs model later, I'd be thinking that the iphone 4 model looked ancient?
Or does the iphone 4 actually aesthetically look newer and more modern than the 3gs? If so, what quality allows them to achieve this effect? And wouldn't they have just had the iphone 4 model to begin with if that was the case?