The new features make up for any drawbacks of not altering the body design, said reviewers from the New York Times, Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. They praised the voice-command feature named “Siri” that lets users ask for weather updates, make calendar appointments or send messages without tapping on the keyboard.

“Crazy good, transformative, category-redefining speech recognition,” said David Pogue, the New York Times reviewer.

“Vastly better” than rival phones with voice commands, said Bloomberg’s Rich Jaroslovsky.

Siri is the “standout feature,” said Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal.