Back in January of 2015, I decided that I was going to shift up both my cell phone and my cell phone plan. Prior to that I had been using my sister’s old flip phone. I had become jaded after my experience with my HTC Incredible that I bought after graduating college in 2010. It held so much promise at the time, as did Android. I had spent much of 2010 developing Android applications in school and was excited about the operating system.
It just wasn’t meant to be though. After not that long I had problems with random crashing and progressive slowdown. My phone is the one piece of tech I need to be 100% reliable. No funny business. Before I ever had any kind of smartphone, I used my Palm device in conjunction with a flip phone. I was used to the Palm’s rock-solid performance.
In deciding what to do, I chose to pick up a Palm Pre 2. In 2015, 5 or so years after it’s initial release, they could be had new for very cheap. To me, it was a smartphone that was going to be solid (thanks to WebOS) but that didn’t have any bells and whistles I didn’t really want or need anyway. I used it for the past year pretty successfully, even though the very last semblance of any WebOS updates or support was officially sunset in February of 2015. Pretty much none of the apps that depended on web-based services worked anymore.
So a week ago, I came to the conclusion that I was officially satisfied with iOS and where it was headed based on my almost 2 years with my iPad Air. I went out and picked up an iPhone 6s Plus. Why the plus? Because I hate tiny screens and I need to do a lot of systems administration when I’m out and about. A bigger screen makes VNC, SSH and other management tools a lot easier to use.
Now that it’s been a week, what are my impressions? I really like it. I actually think Apple nailed the physical design with the iPhone 5, but the design of the 6s is still pretty nice. This is my first device with Touch ID too, and I have to say, the speed on the 6s Touch ID sensor is amazing. I push the home button just like I always would, and it turns on and unlocks. It’s seriously snappy.
I was surprised how much I liked the Health app. I didn’t even know it was there. I’ve been watching my health more closely lately, and I was immediately interested when I saw the phone counting my steps and helping me set goals for movement. I actually liked it so much, I picked up a “**Misfit Shine**”:http://www.smalldog.com/mfg/?MfrName=Misfit to augment it (and so steps are counted even if I’m not carrying my phone). It’s always hard to fix something if you don’t know what’s going on. I hope that by getting better data about my movement and exercise I can better work on my weak spots.
As far as iPhone 6s specific features, I do think 3D Touch is pretty cool. When it was announced I thought it would be a gimmick that wasn’t very useful, but I really like the “peek” feature in mail. I often just quick glance over mail messages and then file them away. 3D Touch lets me do this in one step, and I find it really useful. 3D Touch also allows for what is hands down THE BEST control over text editing in iOS yet. Basically if you press on the onscreen keyboard with force, it turns into something more like a computer trackpad. With a light press you can move the cursor around and with a harder press you essentially “click” to start selecting text. This is an incredible feature that makes text editing on iOS not only reasonable, but actually enjoyable.
Live photos I could take or leave. They’re neat, and I’ll probably leave the feature on just because, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel like “wow, I’m glad I had live photos there!”
I know this is probably old news to a lot of readers, but I’ve actually been pretty slow to get onto the smartphone train, despite smartphones being particularly useful to someone like me. I’m looking forward to giving Apple Pay a try and I’m also excited to add the iPhone’s camera to my video recording arsenal.
