So I bought a SIM from US Mobile ($4) and set up a sample plan for them. 100 minutes, 100 texts (both the minimum) and 4 GB of data. The total cost per month is $27. A more realistic configuration for me would probably be 300 minutes and 10 GB of data (just to be safe) but even that is all of $39 a month. They’re backboned off T-Mobile, so I have a pretty good idea what their network is like, and in the early testing on my iPhone 6 (to eliminate iPhone/Android differences in how stats are calculated and bars shown) it seems to be not-terrible. The only caveat is that they don’t support visual voicemail, although the fact that I even thought about voicemail proves I’m over 40.
In the course of doing this, I have come to realize that yes, the iPhone 6 is just a little too big. The Moto X has the same size screen in a smaller package. Not much smaller – the difference is 2 millimeters wide and 9 millimeters high – but when those differences are all bezel and no screen whatsoever, it makes a world of difference. It also doesn’t help that the iPhone 6 requires a case if you want it to lie flat and not on the camera hump, which only makes matters worse (not to deny that the Apple leather case is very nice). And of course, the iPhone 6 and 6S are infamous for their battery performance, so much so Apple had to produce a first-party battery case. But that is neither here nor there at present, and Apple does deserve credit for keeping the same outward body dimensions (and thus the same cases and accessories apart from headphones) for three generations of the device (as well as keeping the iPhone 5 design from 2012 intact for the SE).
Again, it drives home how the Moto X got it right. Just a hair over 5 inches by 2.5 inches, with a 720p display in AMOLED, 2 GB of RAM, always-listening voice command (“listen up, Friday”) and a 2000 mAh battery (which Apple has yet to fit into a phone that isn’t a cafeteria tray). What I wouldn’t give…but again, neither here nor there.
The point is, I feel like there’s a sweet spot in which a larger phone could be made to work for me. In my continuing quest for the one perfect solution for everything, the notion that there’s one phone that could be the daily driver and the travel phone and a viable Kindle substitute and have my EU SIM card in there at the same time and have replaceable parts in case the camera or battery go south…
And then I see Andy Rubin’s new Essential phone. Standalone device, presumably not bound to carrier updates, ceramic and titanium and a HUGE full-screen display (with a notch for the camera), a real premium device with a 3000mAh battery…and it’s actually longer (by 4mm) and wider (by 4 mm) than the iPhone 7 is already (although thick enough to completely contain the camera, so well done there). Which means that by the time you put the case on the iPhone 6 I currently have, it’s…the same size. Just a hair too big. All screen, which is nice, but it’s still a phone that’s just a hair bigger than the phone that was just a hair too big. And if the Pixel and the iPhone 7 are already a hair too big, I don’t have an answer. I don’t think we’re going to get a phone with a 4.7” display in a compact one-hand-able format again. Which is why I’m back to “you will pry this iPhone SE from my cold dead hands.” I haven’t had a work phone upgrade in three years, because I wanted this SE to be mine and mine alone, and I’m glad I did (and that I have a viable option for continuing on prepaid for under $40 if circumstances dictate.