4 years. That’s how long it is since I had a phone upgrade. My trusty iPhone 6 was doing the business, coping with everything I needed from a smartphone. I was on my 2nd iPhone 6 handset and my son was running a 5S with a badly cracked screen. He stares closely at the thing for many hours a day which I feared would affect his long term vision. Plan: sell him the 6 and get a X.
So I went up to Robina on my birthday to get a new iPhone X and to check the battery on my 6. The Genius Bar ran a suite of tests on it and briefly showed me the readout: all good except for the battery. While I waited for the new battery I bought the new X with 12 months interest-free credit. The Genius Bar didn’t charge for a new battery which I thought was very cool of them. And I was spending $1500 on a new one…
So after using it for a week what do I think?
It takes a day or two to become familiar enough with the new all-swipe commands on the big screen display. No Home button and no bevel means a lot of screen for the handset size. Once accustomed it feels much more natural not to have to return to a physical Home button to get around. Now when I go back on a pre-X iPhone it feels old fashioned and clunky. How fast things change. Soon all-screen phones will be the norm.
Of course having the latest chip means a super fast, silky action and along with the newest OLED screen the performance is terrific, photos, video, anything, it is superb. Face ID works very well. I don’t even notice it anymore, I just look at the phone and it unlocks. Setup was 30 seconds.
A minium storage size of 64GB is a four-fold increase on my 16GB iPhone 6 and surely enough for most of us even if you’re doing a lot with the brilliant camera and it’s effects.
Is it worth the cost? A very subjective question.
Like most of us the iPhone is my most used piece of equipment, more so than my iMac, more so than your laptop. As such I ‘need’ a good phone if I want to live in the modern connected society. Any good iPhone from version 6 onwards can run anything you need to do, its just a matter of selecting one with enough storage.
If you are synced up by iCloud to your devices and organise your life via Calendar, Notes and Address Book like I do; socialise via FB, Instagram, email, whatever. Its all done on the iPhone, specially one with a big screen. With a 256GB model you have a small computer with plenty of space for most people.
Who needs a Mac anymore?
