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Technology review: iPhone 6 rekindles excitement for early iPhone user [The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City](Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 23--After getting burned by a quick price drop on Apple's first iPhone when it debuted in June 2007, I vowed to never be an "early adopter" again. What a difference seven years makes. The cult of Apple lives again. I upgraded Friday to a brand-new iPhone 6 after spending the last three years with an iPhone 4s. I've watched with a tinge of jealously as Apple launched the iPhone 5 in 2012 and then the iPhone 5s last year, but resisted upgrading until now. I'm older and wiser, so I wasn't among the faithful who waited in line at the Apple store. I just had UPS deliver the phone to my house. Setting up the new iPhone was easy, with most of the time coming from backing up my old one, which I hadn't done for a couple of months. Loading the backup copy on to my 128-GB iPhone 6 took about 30 minutes using the Lightning cord connected to my home Mac. I transferred almost 5 GB of music, almost 70 apps and more than 450 photos, along with various books and documents. First, the jump in display size and the camera upgrades were definitely worth the price of upgrading for me. The iPhone 6 has a 4.7-inch display, about 34 percent bigger than the iPhone 4s display. The bigger display just makes everything look better, with photos almost bleeding to the left and right edges of the screen. There's more room for timeline updates in Twitter and Facebook. And I now have two--that's right, two!--extra rows on the home screen for apps. The keyboard, too, is much easier to type on with the larger screen. If there's one drawback, it's a little harder to reach the "back" button on most apps. I have fairly average-sized hands, but it's a stretch to get to the "back" button if you're trying to use the phone with one hand, especially the right hand. Apple has a workaround called "Reachability" for this problem where you can double-touch the home button, but I couldn't get it to work half the time. The iPhone 6 has a 8-megapixel main camera and a 1.2-megapixel FaceTime camera for videoconferencing and "selfies." There's not a whole lot new on the camera front, other than some software additions for face detection and exposure controls. I did enjoy playing around with the slow-motion video feature, which looked great when I captured our 6-month-old crawling on the floor and enjoying his Jumparoo activity center. Other things that will take some time to get used to for iPhone 4s users are the power button on the right side and the headphone jack at the bottom. With the iPhone 6's larger size, it makes sense for the power button to remain within easy reach, but after seven years of it being at the top, it still feels strange. I don't know why the headphone jack was moved to the bottom, although that's not a new development if you're upgrading from an iPhone 5 or 5s. I can't say I was a fan of Touch ID, Apple's biometric fingerprint reader used to unlock the phone and pay for purchases. I'm not paranoid enough or interesting enough to need hard-core security measures, but I did want to set it up for iTunes purchases. Apple supposedly lets you do that, but it made me enter a passcode each time. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature. After the first full charge, I got more than 36 hours of use out of the iPhone 6, with most of it on the Wi-Fi network at my house over the weekend. Much of the power consumption for me came from checking Twitter, the messaging app GroupMe, fantasy football apps, music and reading online news sites. I drained the battery completely on Monday afternoon by streaming video. It took about 90 minutes to get back to a full charge. The new version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 8, includes a handy look at power consumption by app. It's a good way to check your most-used apps and see which ones aren't worth keeping on your phone anymore. Under the iOS 8 upgrade, new iPhones bought in the past year also are eligible for a free suite of Apple's productivity apps, including Keynote, Numbers, Pages and iMovie. This is my fourth iPhone since 2007; I had AT&T service for the first two iPhones and Verizon for the next two. In Oklahoma City, I haven't had a problem with service from either carrier. With the iPhone 6, I'm now on Verizon's LTE high-speed data network, a considerable upgrade from the 3G data network on my iPhone 4s. It's not as good as going from a dial-up modem to broadband, but it's close. If you've got an older model iPhone, upgrading to the iPhone 6 is definitely worth it. But if you already have an iPhone 5 or 5s, I'm not sure the new features make much sense unless your phone contract is expiring. Most iPhone 5 users will probably be fine with the new version of Apple's iOS. ___ (c)2014 The Oklahoman Visit The Oklahoman at www.newsok.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |