The following are random thoughts and musings from my first three days of owning an iPhone 6 Plus.

  • Holy Hell, this is thing is big.
  • I’m still torn on the size. For some things, it’s great. For others, it can be frustrating. Most of my smartphone use is generally two-handed, so the lack of one-handed usability isn’t really a big deal, but the weight balance of the phone seems a bit off, so it feels unstable at times even when used with two hands.  If battery life wasn’t a concern, I might actually go with the standard iPhone 6. Of course, after moving from the 3.5-inch iPhone 4 to the 4.7-inch HTC One X, I remember the iPhone felt like a toy.  Similarly, I may not be able to go back to a smaller phone once I’m used to the 6 Plus.
  • Unfortunately, Apple made the same mistake HTC did this year – it made a big, somewhat-slippery phone. Big is fine; slippery is not. It’s not as slippery as I’d been lead to read in reviews, but it’s also not quite as grippy as other phones I’ve used.
  • I generally hate cases, but this time gave in and bought Apple’s official leather case…and promptly took it off again a couple of hours later. It’ll probably going back to Best Buy. It’s fine if you want a case, I guess, and it felt nice enough in the hand, but I very much like the design of the 6 Plus, and dislike covering that up.  It also made the power button annoyingly un-responsive. I might try a clear case but, despite the obvious danger, I prefer carrying my phones case-less.  All of the cases for the 6 Plus will also inevitably ruin the feel of the curved glass on the sides, as well as make edge-gestures less responsive.
  • As I said: I love the design of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus…as long as you don’t look at those lines on the back. Ick. Also, while I appreciate the desire to have the device lay flat on a table, I miss the in-hand feel of a device with a curved back.
  • Because of the pseudo-tablet nature of the device, I find myself using it in landscape more frequently than other phones I’ve used in the past, especially since Apple’s apps have been optimized to use the bigger screen more effectively. Unfortunately, while the home screen displays in landscape, the lock screen does not. This seems like a silly oversight on Apple’s part.
  • The camera is so, so, so good, you guys. It may not take the best possible image in every possible scenario, but the overall reliability is exceptional. I don’t think I’ve taken a single blurry photo with the thing, nor have I taken a shot with poor white balance. It’s also really great to use an iPhone with burst-mode.
  • Android has definitely taken strides towards being a more fluid experience, but Android on top-of-the-line hardware still doesn’t compare to iOS on top-of-the-line hardware. It is difficult to beat the user experience you get when a company is fully in control of a device’s hardware and software. It’s absurd that a device like the Nexus 6 still has performance problems. Yes, this is likely due to the fact that Lollipop is encrypted by default – but if that’s the case, it’s Google’s job to make sure the UX doesn’t suffer.
  • Battery life is very, very solid – I think this the first time I’ve gone to bed with my phone having more than 50% remaining. I still charge it every night, because I’m anal like that, but it’s refreshing to know that I don’t have to.  Still, you certainly can kill it if you try – I haven’t yet, but I came close my first night, since it was off the charger at 9 AM and I didn’t go to bed until around 2 AM.   So far, it seems as though it will meet my needs when it comes to having a phone that won’t die before the end of the day regardless of what I do with it; in that area, it’s feels closer to an iPad than a smartphone.
  • This is the first smartphone I’ve ever had where I don’t bother to recharging after using RunKeeper or in-car navigation.  Of course, I also don’t typically spend my day playing graphically intensive games or watching hours of video – those activities will kill any smartphone pretty quickly, and that’s where tablets shine over phones.
  • I miss Android’s battery graph. The usage-breakdown-by-app is helpful, but not nearly as helpful as seeing what particular locations/activities/etc. drain my battery more than others.
  • Part of me wonders how battery life would be on a similarly-sized Android phone; benchmarks put the Note 4 and 6 Plus at roughly the same levels of battery performance, but I’ve yet to use an Android device (phone or tablet) that didn’t experience much greater levels of battery drain while on standby. It’s really all about that standby time; 1-2% idle drain per hour, rather than 5% or more. It seems like a small difference, but it adds up throughout the day. So far I haven’t had to turn anything off on the phone, either – for example, Google Now seems to have retained almost all of its location-centric functionality without the battery drain often seen on Android.
  • iOS8 has solved most of the issues I had with iOS, with the glaring exception of setting default apps. With the Today view, I don’t even miss widgets on the home screen – the notification pull-down is debatably a more logical place for them, since you can get to them anywhere.  The Today screen feels like a more powerful version of DashClock, which is one of the only widgets I used anyway.
  • Notifications on iOS are in many ways almost on-par with Android at this point, especially with the addition of notification actions, some of which are actually more useful than their Android counterparts.  For example, I’m more likely to want to mark an e-mail as read than delete it. Some things – like replying to an SMS or iMessage directly from the notification – are actually implemented better on iOS.  Unfortunately, some third-party apps – most notably Google’s – still haven’t implemented these features. Why can’t I mark a message as “Done” from an Inbox notification?  It’s not like Inbox is an older app with legacy code to worry about.
  • I also prefer the way Android 4.4 and earlier displays notifications in the status bar without intruding on screen real-estate, but unfortunately, with heads-up notifications in Android 5.0, this behavior is now essentially identical between the two platforms.  That, combined with the lockscreen notifications of Lollipop, means that, notification-wise, the two platforms are more indistinguishable than they’ve ever been. I miss the status bar icons from Android, but badge counts on app icons serve a similar purpose for me.
  • The Settings screen is insane at this point, and really needs a search option.
  • Touch ID is as great as I expected. I hate passcodes on phones to the point where I’d typically leave my phone unsecured, but Touch ID is the perfect compromise. It makes going without Android’s Trusted Devices feature much easier, and is arguably even more secure.
  • My FitBit’s background sync disconnects my headphones the same way it did on my HTC One running KitKat. Apparently this is a known issue; it’s a shame FitBit doesn’t seem interested in resolving it.
  • On the subject of bluetooth issues: once in awhile, the volume of music and podcasts on my car stereo randomly dips for a couple of seconds. This is something I remember happening on my old iPhone 4, as well as occasionally on my Android phones, but it seems more noticeable with the 6 Plus.
  • I forgot how well-integrated media playback is in iOS. iOS does a much better job of remembering what audio app I was using last (PocketCasts or Play Music, for example) and resuming that app when I hit play/pause on my headphones or Pebble.
  • I still really miss my Moto 360…
  • …but that being said, I’m using a Pebble again and the software’s gotten quite a bit better since the last time I used it. It also seems to work perfectly well with the iPhone. Just being able to dismiss notifications from my watch is a pretty nice change, and makes me miss the Moto 360 a little less.
  • I like than I can activate Siri for my Bluetooth headphones with a long-press; on Android, this would, for some absurd reason, launch the voice dialer rather than Google Now, even on Android 5.0. It’s not quite as convenient as voice commands on the Moto 360, but it’s a decent replacement for a quick note or reminder…
  • …speaking of which, I have yet to find a way of replacing my previous habit of adding items to Wunderlist using voice commands. This is one specific area where I expected my workflow to suffer, so I’m not particularly surprised to see it, but it’s still an adjustment.
  • People sometimes cite iTunes as a reason to avoid using iOS, but I still haven’t had any use for it. Podcasts are managed and sync’d by PocketCasts, while my music still lives happily in Google Play Music, and iCloud backups are handled automatically.
  • I miss being able to download apps from my desktop browser, though. Apple desperately need a web-based app store.
  • I also miss Muzei, my old live wallpaper that would randomly select a new background from my Flickr photos every hour.
  • As an iPad and MacBook owner, I loved the theory of Apple’s Hand-off and Continuity features, but actually using them was still a minor revelation. While I was able to replicate much of the same functionality via third-party apps and services on Android, there’s something reassuring about having it work natively. I was also reminded just how many of my friends use iMessage when I watched 90% of my text conversations turn blue – highlighting one of those few major iOS features that Android has been unable to match, even three years after its introduction.
  • iMessage seems far more reliable than I remember it being during its initial introduction, and there are definite benefits to being seamlessly integrated into the same chat experience that most of my friends are using – especially when you’re a social planner like I am.
  • The ability to make calls and send texts from my iPad means that, at home and at work at least, it is now able to serve as a complete surrogate for my phone. My dream of my smartphone becoming a dumb data/text/phone router while at home is almost a reality – the only missing piece of the puzzle is the notification mirroring functionality I’d grown to enjoy with PushBullet.
  • When out and about, the ability to start a mobile hotspot for my iPad or MacBook without having to even touch the phone is one of those small touches that it’s hard to go without once you’ve experienced it.
  • Speaking of Apple services: why does iOS still blow Android away when it comes to full-device backups?  I can plug my iPhone in every night and confidently know everything I care about (including text message history) will be backed up and available on another device.  This is still a fantasy on Android, which is especially absurd when you consider that cloud services is what Google does.

So far, I’m surprised how little I miss about Android – but I also know I’m only three days in, and this could quickly change as little annoyances add up. I’m impressed by the strides Apple has taken with iOS, though – they continue to take the right inspiration from Android, while implementing those ideas in such a way that it’s much less likely for a rogue third-party app to negatively impact my experience.  While it is certainly still a walled garden, it is a much prettier walled garden, and when it comes to the computing device I use most on a daily basis, I’ve become more willing accept some minor limitations in exchange for reliability.

Of course, what really matters is long-term reliability – proving to be “reliable” over the course of three days isn’t particularly impressive. I’ll certainly report back if anything changes in this (or any other) regard.