lauantai 23. tammikuuta 2016

Back on iOS - Again

Well, as it turns out I'm once again running an iPhone as my daily driver. I managed to find a person who wished to trade in his 64GB iPhone 6 Plus that was warranty replaced with a new device on new year's eve for my 64GB Nexus 6P. Even though I would've preferred the 6s Plus with 2GB of RAM, the 6 Plus was still a good deal as it removes the battery issues I had with my iPhone 6 and also solves the annoyances my Nexus 6P got with Android 6.0.1, i.e. Bluetooth and occasional connectivity issues. The 6P wasn't a bad experience (far from it), but in the end iOS seems to fit my needs better. With the iPhone I get better and more predictable battery life, my work email and calendar (granted, this is a company policy issue instead of a technical limitation), and most importantly stable Bluetooth. Those irregular one second gaps of silence every now and then that 6.0.1 introduced were slowly driving me crazy. With podcasts it was an annoyance, but when it comes to music it's approaching the dealbreaker territory quite fast.

Maybe I was just using the wrong apps on Android, but upon my return to iOS it was nice to see how many of the apps I used had 1Password and/or TouchID integration. The Nexus Imprint on my 6P was a bit of a letdown as it wasn't of much use besides unlocking the phone even though it did that blazingly fast. 

However, I did lose mobile payments for now with the transition as Apple Pay is not yet available in Finland and thanks to iPhone NFC being locked down to Apple Pay only, the NFC hardware is currently totally useless. Even more than having Apple Pay here, I'd like Apple to open up the NFC interface so that Pivo (the app I used for mobile payments on Android) could introduce mobile payments also on their iOS app. I prefer having those smaller payments linked to my debit card (like I had with Pivo) instead of piling up stuff on my credit card.

I still have my Nexus 5 for staying in touch with the Android side of things, but with my 6 Plus as my daily driver I'll be eagerly waiting for iOS 9.3 and Siri in Finnish + Night Shift. If the iPhone 7 does indeed have the rumored waterproofing, I think I'll upgrade to the Plus version of that once it comes out.

Oh, one more thing. I kinda like the fact that I got my 6 Plus secondhand as I didn't get to pick the color. I now have the gold version which is quickly growing on me (Apple going with a toned-down more champagne gold is the key here, I couldn't stand some flashy bling gold), but if I had initially bought it myself, I might've gone with the Space Gray as my color preferences regarding iPhones have been pretty much in line with those of Henry Ford.