For half an age, I held out against the trend of switching to the nearest iThing. And I didn’t suck at it, either. The thing to do as soon as the iPhone 3GS came out was get ye out and buy one. but for me, Nokia worked. Until it didn’t. I switched to an iPhone in April of 2010. And, with a few issues–some of which I’m working on extinguishing, it does, well, what I want it to do. With the appropriate amount of coaxing. I’ve even thought occasionally about trading it in on a 4S. But that’s about where my aspirations to keep up to date with club Apple go their own way.
Because we had a few things to get done anyway, May and I popped in to have a look at the 5 a couple weeks ago. Design-wise, it sort of tries to work. It doesn’t really do much of a good job about it, but it tries. That’s something, at least. But just the act of holding it felt, to both of us anyway, a little bit awkward. Yeah, it’s thinner than the 4 or 4S. But it’s wider, which leaves it less easily actually fitting in your hand. Or, at least, mine. Kind of a requirement, since my phone–whether Apple makes it or not–goes everywhere with me and kind of is my communication, when I either can’t or don’t take the laptop. Because of how they make the case for the 5 now, it’s also a little lighter than the 4 or 4S. And that’s the up side. The down side? Because of how they make the case now, it also scratches a lot easier than the 4 or 4S. Again, not cool when the phone pretty much does what I do with me. It gets some use. I’d rather not have it look like I’ve had the thing for 3 years when it’s been 3 weeks–which has been a quite common complaint. So common, in fact, that some are suggesting mayhaps Apple might aughta think about recalling the device.
We didn’t do much actual playing with the device, mostly because as said, we kind of had things to do, but on top of it being easily scratchable, the iPhone 5–and apparently only the iPhone 5–has an issue with static lines on the keyboard when entering your password into the app store. And, also curiously, only the app store. No idea if it’s a usability problem, but apparently it’s at the very least irritating if you can see it. There’s also an issue, of sorts, with the camera giving photos a purple halo when even close to some light sources, whether or not the light source causing the problem is actually in the frame–surprisingly, and also curiously, Apple says that’s perfectly normal behaviour.
combine that with the, uh, shall we say, issues with wi-fi, again just with the iPhone 5, and you start to see a rather fun picture. So I won’t bother mentioning the light leaking issue as well.
All told, while *probably* not significant enough to cause the iPhone 5 to, uh, rather, cease to be an iPhone 5, they’re significant enough eyebrow raisers to maybe make me wanna somewhat reconsider plunking $150 down on the latest and gratest. So I’ll just be holding off on purchasing that brand spanking new iPhone 5. In the meantime, here’s hoping half the issues are fixed in the 5S. Or the 6, if they decide to fire the letter S. In the meantime, if anyone needs me, my iPhone 4 will be in my pocket and I’ll be around somewhere.