Update 1 week with iPhone 6 plus
I have had the iPhone 6 plus for one week. How is it going? Lets find out!
*** THERE IS AN OCT 1 UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM ***
D’oh! One week later and the phone is damaged.
Those who know me know that I try really hard to take care of my stuff. I personally have never cracked a screen on a phone, and I’ve been using smartphones with touchscreens since the treo! And to clarify, the screen did NOT crack. The phone housing is what appears to not be as strong as I thought or hoped.
So what happened, and YES, this probably sounds like a big collection of weak excuses, but the circumstances add up. The phone is big. DARN bit. People are reporting that the phone BENDS if you have it in your pants and put enough pressure on it, so okay, can’t put it in the jeans front pocket. Nice cases for iphone6 plus that protect from droppage like this type of stuff are unicorns at the moment. #hardtofind so… so what did I do? don’t want to #bendgate it, so I had it in my shirt pocket. Then I needed to bend over to pick something up…. and… slip… bang… #crap
It fell about 4–5" from my pocket onto the linoleum floor. Not concrete, not 10 feet high, just a bitty drop. In fact, there are no dents, scratches, or any other marks on the phone that suggest it was abused. The screen popped off the frame on the right side exposing the techy bits inside. Everything works, it just kind of freaks me out that it wont hold up. For $900, any mobile device should be able to at least handle moderate bumps.
So I am not thrilled. I’ve dropped previous iphones and several android phones and tablets 5x higher and on worse surfaces with only a resulting scratch and no actual damage.
I spent 2 hours on the phone with T-mobile yesterday, the result of which is they said I can’t return or exchange it, they consider it user damaged, and If I sent it back, they will keep the phone and still charge me the full price. #yikes !! I’ll visit the Apple store today to see what they think and hopefully get better service from them. (will #update afterwards)
Ok, other than the screen separation issue, here’s what I found in a week of using the ip6+
- Like my previous post, I continue to assert that the iphone 6 plus does NOT eliminate the want/need for a tablet (ipad or other).
- The screen isn’t THAT big that it is easy to do tablet-oriented tasks.
- Games are not as satisfying as on the ipad, and some tablet optimized games that work are just unusable because of such a high pixel density and small screen.
- One-handed use: difficult. The phone is skinny and slippery, which doesn’t help when you have to do extensive reaching with one hand.
- Two-handed use: awesome.
- OS performance: stellar
- Passbook/apple pay: meh — i tried twice to get it to work this week and had nothing but problems
- Battery life: best i’ve ever used. Hands down, batter life is a major seller.
- In the past, i’ve had to turn off services to make my mobile last through a whole day
- with ip6+ i have everything on, normal use all day, and the battery lasts 2 whole days!!!
- BONUS! T-mobile iphone 6’s apparently are shipped as “unlocked” so you can use any sim from any carrier! Pretty stellar benefit if you ask me…
Thats about it for now. Have your own thoughts? Tell me about it on twitter @aschwabe
** OCT 1 UPDATE **
I took the iphone into an Apple store and talked to a “Genius” :)
They took a 15 second look at it and said “oh yeah, thats defective, let me get you a new one.”
They took my phone back with them, and evidently “pushed the screen back in” — and found that the phone started having problems afterward. e.g. wifi stopped working.
Anyway, they came back out with a new iPhone 6 plus, same carrier, same color, same memory size in a thin sealed box, not the normal consumer box. Evidently they planned for a lot of swaps. Anyway, 10 minutes later and I had a brand new phone. It has been much more solid than the last one.
+1 to Apple! They made it right and did so fast and painlessly.
