I wanted the iPhone X. Let me just get that out of the way right away. I have lusted after the other smart phones where the screens reach all of the way to the edges. But never lusted after them enough to switch formats from an iPhone to an android. Seeing the X – seeing the screen size – I was in love.
But — you knew there would be a but — my 3-yr old iPhone 6 was having issues. Lots of issue. I mean, charging issues, headphone jack issues, battery issues, and talking on the phone also had issues. It was time to replace the phone. And time was not on my side. At least not enough to get me to November.
I went back and forth about the iPhone 8. In my opinion, it wasn’t compelling enough from a technology standpoint. Yes, it is better than my 3-yr-old iPhone 8 but what was I really getting? Then, I started reading things where people who are huge iPhone lovers were asking the same thing. This video –
This video confirmed my feelings – confirmed my thoughts – about the iPhone 8, at least.
G finally commented to me that I need to consider the iPhone 8+. But that phone is huge, I said.
Then I started looking at it. And the specs compared to the iPhone X? Very similar – just a larger form factor…….but so is the X compared to the 8.
Hmmm…..
Cost difference? Close to $300…..cheaper than the X.
Ok…..I’ll get the iPhone 8+.
What do I think so far?
Yes, it is a bit bigger than I expected. But I like it. The screen is beautiful. The size really isn’t that big of a deal. I put G’s iPhone 7 with case on top of it, and it isn’t that much smaller. I compared it last night to SB’s smart phone – an android – and it was pretty much the same size.
Battery life is awesome. I haven’t put it on a charger today. I have talked to my mom for an hour. I have texted people all day. I have used it to look things up on the internet, and all – and the battery is doing good especially compared to the last phone.
I’m a photographer, and the camera on this phone is awesome. Yes, you can carry a camera and gear, but how often do we yank out the phone to capture the moment? A lot. The iPhone 8+ comes with their new portrait setting which I’ve been having fun using. And the zoom is also good. I like that – not that it will replace my real camera for shots.
The speed of the phone is also good. I was starting to have problems running apps on the phone without them crashing on me. Not happening with this phone. They are even running in the background for a long time making it faster when I go back to them. I hadn’t realized how bad my old phone was until the new phone.
Wireless charging fucking rocks. Seriously. Fucking rocks! I read that for best results, you have to remove the case. I bought a silicon case for my phone and discovered that the charger still works fine if I leave it on. I’m going to have to watch for some sales because I’d love to have one of the wireless charger stations on my desk at work too.
There have been some weird glitches. The first was my Apple Watch. I had expected to just establish the connection to the new phone. It’s all bluetooth. In order to get my Apple Watch to talk to my new iPhone, I had to reset my watch to factory standard, connect the watch to the iPhone, then the watch restored itself to the configuration it had before the factory reset. A lot of time to get the watch reconnected.
The second thing is the restore from the cloud. I got this watch on Sunday. Today a new IOS update came out but I cannot install it because the restore just finished about an hour ago. I restored about 100 GB of data on wireless – and it took 4.5 days. The cloud is nice but not for restoring things. Would have been faster to do it from my Mac (assuming I had a backup on my Mac).
Portrait mode is still in beta, so the few times I have shown someone how it works by taking their photo, I have run into issues where some of the features did not work. In the end, I have gotten it to work, but it is quirky.
We shall see if my feelings about the iPhone 8 + change but so far, so good. I’m glad I went the direction I did.
