So, have you yet held an iPhone 6 Plus in your hand? Between #bendgate* (BTW you shouldn’t put it in your back pocket anyway because it can easily be swiped from there, just like your wallet) and initial challenges with iOS8, the iPhone 6 and its big brother, iPhone 6 Plus, have come under plenty of flack. People smirk about the phablet. It’s neither here nor there. Too big for (easy) one-handed manipulation; too small for couch surfing. But, I believe, this too shall come to pass…
iPhone 6 plus argum
ents
Personally, I am a great fan of the iPhone 6 Plus. Having leapfrogged from the iPhone 5, the things I am digging (as one might expect):
- the finger ID is really handy (even more so because of the big size)
- the 5.5″ screen massively improves the reading, video and image viewing experience
- the zoomed keyboard is so big and easy to use that, when I went back to the iPhone 5, I had to do a double take (it seems minute, now)
But, the surprising reason for which I have completely embraced the iPhone 6 Plus relates to an enhanced user experience that I didn’t realize was bugging me so much before, with the smaller iPhone 5 chassis.
I love the iPhone 6 Plus because it stands tall in my breast pocket, so I don’t have to dig down behind the wallet to extract it. {Tweet this!}
The Apple-icious user experience
While the iPhone 5 is small and compact, one thing that always irked me was having to reach back into depths of the breast pocket to extract my iPhone, which had turned on its side (as in the image above). When the earphones were plugged in and the phone was sideways in my pockets, that meant that the wire going into the iPhone socket would bend considerably… over time, to the point of damaging the cord. And, I had already abandoned two earphones. The notion of the standup phone/phablet is only going to be new to iPhone users whose previous models were all compact (4″ and smaller), as opposed to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 or Sony Xperia Z3… But, I must say it has been quite the revelation for me.
What’s the phablet use case?
Your ”need” for a phablet to sit along side the growing number of other mobile/transportable devices will depend on several things. For example, if you already have an iPhone 5 and an iPad mini, I’d balk at the 5.5″ phablet. In my case, I have an iPhone 5 and an iPad 2, so the middle size has its purpose, for me, as a phone-enhanced surfing device. However, I would not want to go on a run with the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus – the compact portability and durability of the 4″ device is absolute. The 5.5″ size just doesn’t work on my arm band!
iOS8 improvements…
Having gotten through the seemingly inevitable bugs of the OS upgrade, there are some great enhancements that I think deserve being highlighted:
- being able to deal with notifications as they pop up
- the predictive text on Messages
- hand-off connectivity between the devices (I was impressed when I found a YouTube video I was viewing that continued where I left it when I switched from my mac to iPhone, viewing the same video via movies)
And an ongoing iOS bug…
Meanwhile, life wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t have my little unresolved bug. I am knee-deep in a drawn-out issue (involving two Apple Genius/Store visits, three long IM chats with customer service…): when I sync my Apple devices via iTunes, they keep on showing the sync wheel spinning on and on, even after disconnecting. Only solution for now is to turn off and on the device. Ugh. The saga continues. And, I guess that’s just life in the 21st century connected world. {Tweet this!}
What’s your experience with the iPhone 6 Plus. Are you a fan, potential buyer or a seller? Any good use cases?
*For more about the bendgate controversy, I invite you to read the Consumer Reports study that shows the gravity (or not) of the situation.
