The new iPhones are, sadly, predictable. The iPhone 6 at 4.7”, the iPhone 6 Plus at 5.5”, and the iPhone 5S still sticking around as the $99-with-contract option. Apple has caved and gone the way of all other phone manufacturers, and decided that the premium phone must of necessity be a big phone. It’s the same problem with the new Moto X, which grew from an ergonomic and delightful 4.7” to a just-a-bit-too-big 5.2” – and every reviewer is saying how much worse the hand-feel is as a result.
It drives home the point that the “phone” bit is more of a misnomer than ever. These are Internet communication and media devices; telephony is an afterthought. Holding a 5.5” phone up to your head looks incredibly stupid, but you’re never going to do it any more than you’d hold your iPad up to your head. The iPhone 6 Plus should more accurately be called the iPad Nano. For anyone who’s ever done a real train commute, though, needing two hands for the phone is a pain in the ass.
And that, in many ways, is where the Apple Watch comes in. After two-plus years, the mythical “iWatch” is finally real – and starting at a wig-splitting $350, more than even the Moto 360. Apple did well to remember that a typical mechanical watch has a crown, and that it makes an excellent input device, and maybe the integration will be enough to be worthwhile…but $350 is a lot of fuckin’ money for a tertiary device. Then again, that’s what I said about the iPad, and three years later the iPad Mini has almost entirely replaced my laptop for everything outside work.
But back to the iPhone 6, which is almost certainly what I’ll be moving to. The screen is larger than my Moto X (and so is the phone itself, by about a third of an inch vertically), the battery life is allegedly improved, and they’re finally caving on NFC payment – which is truly interesting. Because so many other devices have NFC readers already at point of sale (gas stations, drugstore, Whole Foods, vending machine) it should only be a software update to make them work with ApplePay – but because the system relies on a thumbprint from TouchID, you can’t just take the phone and start scanning to pay anywhere, which makes it safer than an actual credit card. (People who don’t understand computers are already conflating an iCloud brute force password hack with the payment system, and making themselves look stupid in the process.)
So now we wait. Will an iPhone 6 on AT&T get through the day better than an iPhone 5 on Verizon? Almost has to, right? It had damn well better, anyway, or I might need to replace my iPod shuffle for the third time…