I confess, I HAD an Iphone6- … Review

The ONLY way I could get a suitable replacement for my Xperia Pro was with an Iphone6- and a keyboard case.

Click image to go to dilbert.com

I have now been using it for over four months – and still would love to upgrade it to something decent…

Until I got an Iphone myself, I believed the fairytale that Iphones were intuitive to use, and with great firm- and hardware. With the only limitation being the Ijail.

Oh boy I was wrong!!!

Hardware

Starting with the exterior, it is poor workmanship, with NONE of the cut outs polished the least. It felt like I had just bought a super overpriced cheese grater!!
That was fairly easy to remedy for the frame, as it is cheap soft aluminium and not e.g. titanium or other premium materials. But not as easy on the nail-breaking poor finish of the screen-button edges. Though a small screwdriver could reduce that somewhat as well.

But what can one expect buying cheap Chinese goods heavily overpriced…?

The cheap (third party) hardened glass plate I added on top for protection had a better edge finish along the hole…

The design LOOKS fair, but is poor in use, as the thin edges have not been added anything to give the slightest grip, so it was like holding a slippery piece of soap. It slipped my hand a couple of times, as well as for two 100% pro aPple users the first days I had it. Luckily it fell softly, as they were in a sofa.

The poor grip is not really an issue for me as the ONLY reason I bought an Iphone was to get a QWERTY keyboard. So it has been used in a casing that also provides a decently secure grip.

It is my impression that the inner hardware of the Iphone is good, despite the old fashioned specs, with a poor resolution screen (it is supposed to be a flagship not midrange – at least the price tag is…)

Firmware

It came with Ios 8.0, that soon after was updated to 8.1 making it less though still very unstable. That helped a lot with 8.2, and even further with 8.3, though 8.3 introduced new Bluetooth instabilities. Neither 8.4 nor 8.4.1 brought any noticeable improvements.
ADD: Ios 9 have the same flaws mentioned here, plus some new one. For more on Ios 9 see this
But after over a weeks usage Ios 9/9.0.1 seems no less stable than Ios 8.4.1 and much more stable than Ios 8.0 when that came out.

The general felling of Ios when coming from Android is a leap back in time to Win6.1, and basic mobile phone functionality is equally poor/lacking implemented. Some was better on early Nokia phones more than a decade ago. Especially the messaging app feels like it is still in beta, or version 1.0. Some can be worked around by installing various third party products, but as all messaging still goes trough the messy app, it does not help a lot. And CERTAINLY does not provide anything close to an intuitive or smooth user experience.

And as my top purposes with my mobile phone (in prioritized order) are

1. SMS/MMS to individuals or groups
2. Mail
3. Web-browsing
4. Navigation
5. Radio (Unfortunately only web, no DAB/FM offered)
6. Sudoku
7. Point and Shoot camera
8. Talk
9. Pocket calculator

This really is a serious issue for me.

The Bluetooth instabilities in 8.3 is that it drops the connection, or fails to reconnect. You have to go into Settings, Bluetooth turn it Off and On. Often that will do the trick sometimes you need to explicitly select the device again.

This bug occurs randomly, though it often results after Aeroplane mode has been active. I have not seen it happen after boot (yet)
I use Aeroplane mode quite a lot, as this is much faster than turning the phone off&on. Use it e.g. during meetings or when in the Cinema.

Messaging app

Assume you send an sms to two people, say something about an arrangement in a couple of days.
The next day you get a reply from one of them. “OK I prefer the second”, but you can’t see the sms you sent!!!!! So you have to close the message, scroll down and find the conversation, open it, back to the original message and reply….. Hello, this is 2015 not 1995, right?

You are typing a reply sms to a friend inviting him for dinner, and then decide, wait I better send it to his wife as well. But you cant!!!
You can however select all the text you wrote, select cut, close the message, add a new message with both recipients and then paste in the text….. Hello, this is 2015 not 1995, right?

You are creating a new sms to some people, and wants to add another recipient. One thing is that you have to add them one at the time, and not just tick each, another is that the plus is placed so close to cancel that the risk of throwing everything away (with no undo) is very high…. Hello, did they even test this before release? And this is version 8.3 ?!?!?!?

When you press the plus to browse the phonebook, pressing a letter is ignored and does not jump to the first beginning with that letter…..

The contacts have the concept of groups, but you can’t send to a group from within the messaging app, you need to get a third party tool for such basic functionality…
Template messaging? No way – third party app, or cut&paste from somewhere else…. (I use the app Group Text  )

et cetera …. BETA software!!!

Contra intuitive UI – The one Key to rule them all

The lack of a proper close on all programs means that when you reenter the program long after (e.g. a week) to do something completely different, you are taken to where you left off. This could in theory make sense, but more often than not it doesn’t.

As typical example, you open your mail/messaging app, read a mail/sms, and press the one and only key, to get to the home screen, to do something else. The next day you want to write a mail/sms, enters the program, and is presented with the old message from yesterday…

This gets even worse if you are in some deep level of e.g. Settings.

Off course you can forcibly get rid of a program, but not in a user intuitive way.

Since aPple want to trick people into believing the system is easy to use, they have only made one hardware key (apart from Lock). To get that to work they have made functions for

• Click
• Long Click
• Double Click
• Triple Click
• Press Lock and Click

Sooooo intuitive… I guess we should feel lucky that we are not supposed to Morse text in….. 👿

The voice stuff that I do NOT want, can not be turned off. And it is associated with a long click that is not that unlikely in a pocket….

You have two options

1. With Siri ON, you can at least turn off the function while the device is supposed to be locked.
2. You can get rid of Siri, but then press and hold in your pocket will activate it even when it is supposed to be locked…

A simple third NO THANKS is not offered. Typically aPple style: “Please select if you prefer to be raped from the front or the rear”.

So currently I’ve set Siri to ON and chosen Cantonese – so it is less likely to understand anything, as I do not speak a word of Cantonese…

Settings

In an attempt to trick people into thinking that no settings are needed, all the settings are gathered together in a mess without any sensible order.
As an example, you find WiFi and Bluetooth directly in the main list, but GPS is hidden under Privacy(!?) way down the list… And at the bottom all the apps real settings.
(BTW they put GPS under Privacy, but invert the warning, so you get a warning turning it OFF not ON…)

Silly beginners fault by the coders

When you request to turn the phone off, you get EIGHT seconds of completely black screen before a tiny grey indicator is shown indicating that it is actually doing a shutdown…

The first time, I was impressed over the quick shut down, and thought the indicator was a response to me trying to turn it on again, And I waited several minutes until I realised it was not in the process of booting… Intuitive my foot! Beta-software….

With a little humour something like this could have been nice during shut down:

Smoothness

One thing that we have all heard a lot about Android is the complaints on lagging. But honestly I never felt any substantial lagging with my ancient Xperia Pro. But when switching to this the difference was immediately felt, and switching back fetching something a month later: YES, Ice Cream Sandwich do lag on a 2011 Xperia Pro.

The things that does work under Ios, does so smoothly.

Camera

For the point and shoot purpose of taking pictures for MMS or background images, it does an excellent job, despite the lack of OIS

US-only or lousy software?

For incoming sms/mms/phone calls they ignore ALL but the last five digits, doing the reverse lookup in Contacts, thus displaying incorrect names – My Motorola Startac from medio 1990’ies had that error too… And it was an embarrassing beginners bug twenty years ago…

Apps

If you install an app, and even IMMEDIATELY uninstall it (even if you do without ever launching it) it will forever remain on your list of installed apps, and there is no way you can delete it!!
ADD 2015-11-12: I installed and shortly after uninstalled an app yesterday, and this does NOT appear on my list, so this bug might FINALLY have been fixed recently. But even apps that have been taken down from the store, still appear on my list as “Not on this Iphone“.

Most apps are paid, but it IS possible to get a refund within a fortnight. (The limit may be regional dependant?)
Use https://reportaproblem.apple.com/ and select “Report a Problem”, and request a refund.
But of course it is so much work, that the greedy sods hope you will not find it worthwhile for a few dollars..
Had they had a shred of decency, it would be possible to regret a buy directly from the store-app on the phone. But as they does not, you can’t.

Ijail

This is actually both a good and a bad thing!

The good thing is that in a strictly controlled environment, they (in theory) should be able to to provide a fluidly and stable user experience.

The flip-side of that coin is that you are tied on hands a feet, with nothing even close to control on what is going on, and with only the options they allow.

Whether the sum of these two end up as positive or negative, is a matter of personal likes and dislikes. For me it is close to zero.

Fixed storage

When people outgrow the storage, they can not just add a large MicroSD, they can not even request to buy a storage upgrade, they need to buy a whole new device!!!
To make sure this happens, they make large firmware upgrades, effectively preventing people from fully using the storage they actually bought. (At least I did not buy the 16GB version)

And it is also much more tedious to transfer data to some proprietary software you need to infest your pc with, rather than just inserting the SD-card and transferring your data.

Shame

I feel ashamed using an Iphone in public, as it to me signals that you are either a fool, or a fashion driven individual that refuses to use common sense.

The whole aPple concept is “The emperor’s new clothes” taken to the extreme.

Luckily the keyboard case makes it so much thicker and hide the mark of shame on the back, so that it is not immediately recognised. But still I hesitate using it in public as a would have with my old Xperia Pro.

Planned obsolescence

It is of course ridiculous that a device with a price tag like this does not have a user replaceable battery.
This is a clear case of planned obsolescence, so that when the normal user want to upgrade in a couple of years, they throw this away, rather than pass it on to someone. This way, they can potentially sell an extra midrange device, as the battery replacement including insured shipping in a couple of years would be a substantial part of what a similar brand new mid ranger will cost at that time.

Hopefully before that I will have found a way to get a BT keyboard to work with a not too huge phone/phablet so I never ever will have to buy another aPple product.

UPDATE 2016-07-31

I finally gave up on the horrible Ios experience, and gave away my Ip6.

I have been using a Blackberry Priv for the last couple of weeks, and though it is not perfect either, it fells less bad.