Google Productivity Pad: iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, First Thoughts

Thursday, September 11, 2014

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, First Thoughts

Alright, now that there has been a couple days for the news to settle and the hands-on reports are out, I wanted to give my non-hands-on impressions of the new iPhones.

I like them

No surprises there, right? I normally like what Apple puts out and once again I think they have made some fantastic new products this year.



iPhone 6 and 6 plus
I am admittedly a phablet hater. I think they look dumb when people use them and that the reside in a space that does not need to be filled. So I don't foresee myself ever owning a 6 plus. Even the 6 might be a little big for me, that remains to be seen until I hold one in my own hands in a few weeks.

One thing I would like to note is that Apple took their sweet time making a bigger phone because they were unwilling to just jump on a bandwagon without thinking through the user experience first. They thought through things like screen resolution on a bigger screen, and one handed operation, and how the operating system would look different on it.

The screens look really good on both phones, but when you are watching on a screen that is lower resolution than the screen you are looking at it is hard to tell...

They both look like gorgeous pieces of design, they are amazingly thin and incredibly elegant from the pictures and videos. Of course if I were spinning in slow motion on a white background I might look elegant too... never mind I wouldn't.

The Letdown
The main thing that disappoints me about these phones is the camera. The fact that there hasn't been any major improvement since the 4s is hard to understand. Each year brings us an incremental improvement, and slow and steady wins the race I guess... But the iPhone is the most popular camera in the world so I would have thought they would want to do more. I was really hoping that with a protruding camera we would get an optical zoom finally, but alas it was not to be.

My feeling on this is that Apple probably has a better camera in the wings, but they are holding it as one of the major improvements for the 4s. They couldn't give everything to us at one time (then who would buy next year?). Regardless the optical zoom probably needs more development before it is ready.

The upshot of the camera staying the same is that I feel less reason to buy any new phone soon, the 4s still has essentially the same camera as the latest model, and it can update to the new operating system, so it should hold fine for now.

Apple Pay
The big benefit of the iPhone 6 and plus in my mind right now is Apple Pay. Why? Because as Tim Cook said, credit cards are old technology that is insecure and needs to be replaced. Is that a reason to run out and buy one? No, not yet. But we know that millions of people will buy these phones, and that means the can begin to take place. This is something that really nobody but Apple could do, and I am excited about it.

Will there be security problems with Apple Pay? Absolutely, and people will make a big deal out of them. That is why Apple is so brave to enter the space. The deal is that there will not be as many security problems as there are with credit and debit cards. Apple waited to do this until they had technology like touch ID in place to help make it more secure. This is in stark contrast to other companies who have ran helterskelter into the mobile payment space producing fractured products with low security and no vision.

Alright, that pretty much sums up my thoughts on these new phones (ok let's be honest, I could talk for hours about them, but those are the important things). I don't want to make this post to long so I am saving talking about Apple Watch for my next post. Thanks for reading, and remember, live better.

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