iPhone 6

Even though in the last post I said I was going for the iPhone 6 Plus, I ended up making a last-minute diversion for the regular iPhone 6. While the 5,5" screen itself wouldn't be too large for me, the large bezels make the device a little too big for carrying around. I made myself a cardboard mockup based on the dimensions of the iPhone 6 Plus and the end result was that I would have too few clothes with big enough pockets to actually carry it with me. As I'm not too keen of the idea of having to use a bag to carry my phone around, I switched to the regular iPhone 6 to keep it pocketable. In addition, it was Erica Griffin's review that finally tipped the scale for me. Around the 12 minute mark she mentions performance issues she's not used to seeing on iPhones. That combined with teardowns that have confirmed only 1 GB of RAM also in the Plus and the scaling that's done for the display (read the details here), I'm somewhat afraid that the hardware in the iPhone 6 Plus might be a little inadequate especially when newer iOS releases arrive. As I already own an iPad 3, I didn't want yet another "whoops, we kind of underestimated the hardware needs for this one" iOS device, so the regular 6 looked like a safer choice with a smaller resolution to drive with its relatively low RAM.  

Now that I have my iPhone 6 I'm glad I did choose it. The phone feels great in my hand and the 4,7" seems rather optimal as a size. In fact, I like the size somewhat more than that of my Nexus 5, which is a bit on the large side even though it's still perfectly usable. Too bad that optical image stabilization and the better battery are available only in the Plus, but with the current bezels the Plus is somewhat too large.

What comes to the software, I'm really liking the extensions in iOS 8. Transmit and 1Password are insanely more useful with extensions, even though 1Password having to rely on the share sheet (iOS limitation here) is somewhat weird UI-wise when considering what the app does. I'm still happy to have that functionality available even though the current implementation is somewhat kludgy from the user experience perspective. What's more worrying is the amount of issues iOS 8 seems to be having. 8.0.1 broke cellular reception and TouchID for many iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users and now there are lots of reports about broken Bluetooth functionality. I seem to be among the lucky ones who haven't had any Bluetooth connectivity issues in iOS 8, but the amount of issues is somewhat alarming. When you add the iCloud Drive issue to the mix, it's clear that Apple has a QA issue on their hands. I've also had an issue where I could start slow motion video capture, but couldn't stop it in any other way than force rebooting the phone. Not good. I hope Apple gets their act together, as the reliability has been one of the selling points for iPhones. It'll be interesting to see how my Nexus 5 works when Android L comes out. If ART makes Android even more stable than it is now, Apple can be in for some rough times if they don't get their quality back on the track.