It’s nice to be able to click “iPhone Mirroring” on my work laptop and quickly bring up my phone. It means things like Signal, personal Slack, even this blog can all be handled from the trackpad and keyboard. All my personal stuff can live on the phone and I don’t have to keep anything on my laptop pertaining to my life outside of work. (I’ll still have Firefox loaded with bookmarks for my soothing background video, obviously, but that’s a lot more innocuous than keeping my personal mail or encrypted messaging and the likes.)
It’s bigger, certainly. Especially with the silicone case on it, which is really the only option to start with. But as much as it pains me to admit it – and it absolutely does – it was time. At some point between late 2017 and early 2020, I transitioned to needing the slightly bigger display, and when I switched back to a smaller device I found myself raising my glasses and holding the phone up to my face a lot closer than I had before. My hope is that with the progressives and a 6.3″ display, that will be less of an issue going forward.
So far, so good. I can do work stuff on it much more readily. I can even plug a USB-C thumb drive into it and do some work. The battery is a lot bigger, and I need to see how well it works to leave Low Power Mode turned off. I’d love to be able to get through an entire day without relying on low power or running out of juice – if I could have this phone top up to only 80% and still be good, like the watch, that would be a big step in the right direction. I still need to figure out the camera – it should theoretically be quicker to bring up and use than ever, once I get the hang of the button, but I don’t have it yet and I missed stuff fumbling for it all weekend. But you can shoot feature films on this thing, in theory, so I can get out of the way and let it do the work.
It does feel like the one device – like the iPad can be saved for shutdown nights when I really need to separate, or kept just for games and video conferencing. Don’t have to tax it any more than I have and it should be able to last another three or four years, maybe longer as just a reader. And if this phone can be made to last for four years – as it should; I don’t need to make another purchase until 2029 on current form – then who knows what will be out there next.