You can tell by the headline that the banjo-playing donkey is striking up in my wife’s head as we speak, because it’s time to talk about phones again. And this is a germane topic because we are setting off to London in August, for the first visit to Europe in six years, and not a moment too soon. The problem is, last time I went to the old continent, it was in 2010 and unlocked smartphones weren’t really a thing as such – unlocked iPhones from the United States definitely weren’t – and I was packing an iPhone 3G in Airplane Mode and my trusty old SonyEricsson Z520 alongside.
That Z520 is no longer a going concern (but has a space of honor in my box of memorabilia) and the Virgin SIM it relied on is defunct. So it’s time to consider what to carry with me. Normally, this is where that Moto X goes, but there are two issues. One is that the camera on the first-gen Moto X is not suitable for any photography greater than Instagram; it certainly isn’t a point-and-shoot replacement the way the iPhone 4S and later have proven to be. The other is that it only supports four LTE bands, all of which are North American – LTE in Europe was barely a thing when the first Moto X shipped, and it doesn’t have the plethora of options the wife’s unlocked iPhone 6S has.
So that brings up the next point: when we went to Japan, I had my iPhone 6 in Airplane Mode with wifi turned on, and we had rented one of those portable WiFi hotspots, and we were largely able to get by (except in the Japanese Alps where coverage was splotchy at best). Since ‘er indoors can pop any old SIM into that phone, by virtue of having bought it unlocked at full price to keep her old data plan, she could very easily fit it with a SIM from Three, the UK provider that offers service at rates that are insanely cheap by US standards. Three also allows tethering, which means she would have unlimited data on her own device and could use it as a hotspot for me to burn up to 12 GB. Setting aside for a moment the notion that this would absolutely destroy her battery life, it provides another option that would be just fine under the circumstances.
But then there’s a wild care, and it is the notional much-rumored iPhone 6C, so-called. The Great Mentioner is convinced that sometime in the first half of 2016, Apple will release a new iPhone out of band with the regular updates, much as they did with the Verizon-capable iPhone 4 or the white models. The general consensus around the rumors is that the body will more or less resemble the iPhone 5S, with a 4” display, but slightly rounded glass more akin to the iPhone 6 series. It will feature the processor of the 6S but the camera of the 5S. And critically, it will feature a battery slightly larger than the 5S, driving a display 30% smaller than the 6 series, without 3D Touch circuitry taking up space inside the phone.
The implications of this are significant. If the screen is consuming 30% less battery power, the expected battery life should be a third longer than on the 6 series. Add to that a camera lens that would be flush with the body of the camera rather than protruding, and the performance gains of the faster (and presumably more efficient) processor, and it’s just barely possible that we might – might – finally have an all-day iPhone that only requires you to carry a battery on days when you’re in full-on tourist mode. It will be genuinely one-hand-usable again. It’ll disappear in a front jeans pocket again. It will, in short, be precisely what I want from a new iPhone. And at that point, it would be possible to splash out on it, straight cash, and just make it my regular everyday phone. Leave the 6 in a drawer at work in case of emergency, put the Moto X in the drawer for Android compatibility testing only and be prepared to pull its SIM if I leave this job, and boom, I’m set for the next couple of years. And between an aging Apple credit and a little bundle of cash unlooked-for from Apple under different circumstances, it’s already paid for.
The downside of this is that I’ve done what i decried in this very space eight years ago: I’m attempting to will a new iPhone product into existence on nothing more than my own desires and hardly-disinterested say-so. And given that any such device will be pitched as entry-level, and possibly have as little as 16 GB of storage, that could be an issue. I really need this thing to be a 32 GB phone at a minimum and I’d prefer if it were 64, although I recognize that’s highly unlikely – but then, the iPhone 5S that’s currently the entry device still has a 32 GB option, the only iPhone that does. So that’s nice. Rumblings also suggest NFC support and 2 GB of RAM – ironically both features of that first-gen Moto X.
That unlocked 32 GB iPhone 5S, right now, costs $500 – bring in a 32 GB phone with those specs as the iPhone 6C and I’m all in.
It doesn’t even have to come in gold. Of which…