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iPhone 6: two weeks on

Two weeks ago, in a journey that brought back memories of hunting down Casio organizers, I trudged the corridoors of Funan Digital Mall in Singapore till I got my hands on an iPhone 6. Here's my impression of it two weeks later.

Right off the bat, I must say I love it. Yes, I'm an Apple fanboy who has had an iPhone for many years, (though I've used an Android on and off and before that lived on a Blackberry). I also have a couple of iPads and iPods, though never a Mac. That bias aside, however, the iPhone 6 is a seriously nice phone - lovely build quality, beautiful screen, wonderful to hold in your hand, blazngly fast and as loaded as you can want. Mine is a 128GB, though I'm still wondering what I to do with the 80GB still left after I put in every song and photo I had. As phone goes there is little to quibble about with what it has.

First, the size. Yes, Jobs was right in that it is a bit of a stretch - a few things require finger gymnastics. However, he was wrong too - visually a screen of that size is gorgeous enough to put up wth a bit of jugglery. A couple of days ago, I restarted my Four, and was immediately struck by how inadequate and small it looked. The six plus has an even bigger screen, but that is clearly a two-handed phone. This one is fine for one-handed, except for the occassional twisting. Its also one of the sharest and brightest screens around - quite comparable to the best of Samsung's offerings. Its also far more oleophobic than the Four was; indeed nearly smudge free even in the stickiest of Mumbai weather.

(Not ditching my iPad Mini though - for many things size matters more than resolution)

Then there's the new look, which does unfortunately look a bit like a Samsung (especially the white version that I bought). Not that I care very much; the rounded seamless glass-metal look is understated but beautiful. And before you say Jobs again, the original iPhone 2 (the one that changed the world) looked like this. Does it bend? Haven't tried it, but it certainly does not feel bendable. Its very light, but looks quite solid. All the other stuff - its fast, the fingerprint scanner is very fuss free, the camera is great, the apps run frictionlessly and all that. Battery life I found to be about as much as before, maybe slightly better, certainly no worse.

Bottom line, its as great a phone as you can find even though the top-end price point is a bit eye-watering (though I find the cost comparions with, say, Xiaomi, similar to matching a Rolex with a Titan). As an upgrade - do it blindly especially if you're on the Four or even the Five (though I'd leave the 5S alone). As a new phone, I give it a more nuanced but still very strong recommendation. Yes, there are worthy Android competitors, but the iPhone 6 is definitely up there among the top few.

Two thoughts, however, pop into my head.

The first is that Apple is peaking out on how much more perfect it can make the phone - the technology leaps have been getting smaller. The iPhone 2 started the smartphone revolution, the Four introduced the eyepoppine retina display, the Five S gave us the reasonably magical fingerprint scanner, the Six is merely bigger and faster; improved implementations of technologies already in the market. As the PC world shows, bigger and faster does continue to sell for a while but eventually starts peaking out. The problem is, there aren't that many tech leaps left - I would think something like texture-enabled displays or an incredible battery that charges in minutes and lasts days - the iPhone 7 would need one of those.

The second thought is that while Samsung Sony HTC Xiaomi go in for device gimmickery or price, Apple continues to build out an incredible eco-system. Its hard to move away from that world, especially when a few clicks gets you every song you ever liked - English, Bollywood or Bengali in my case; even the Tamil stuff I started listening to in hostel. Apps, podcasts, movies, books, a wonderful rich, beautifully integrated eco-system that one never needs to leave and Android has yet to match. I'm hoping FlipKart does integrated Apple Pay soon. The first wave of magical phones created the mass adoption needed for this eco-system, but it now has its own momentum. No doubt this, like everything in the world, this will eventually die but I would give it another decade at least. Till then, Apple just needs to produce great phones, not necessarily phones that are technological magic like the first few were.

Meanwhile, let me get back to crushing even nicer candy.

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Comments

  1. Srikanth13 October 2014 at 11:42

    Good thoughts, particularly on the ecosystem. Curious though, how you find synergies between a premium, device-centric payments solution and an online mass market?

    ReplyDelete

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