iPhone 6 - Initial Impressions and Comparison to WIndows Phone
So after some soul searching I decided that instead of getting my wife the same Nokia 735 RM-1039 that I recently purchased that I'd go ahead and get her the new iPhone 6.
My primary reasons were
1. My wife is very familiar with iOS UI - she's had an iPad mini for a couple of years and is very comfortable the UI
2. With some of her activities - she uses apps that simply aren't available for Windows Phone. Just the reality of the Windows Phone market share.
3. She needed a better camera than her 5Mp Lumia 635 - my wife really documents my granddaughters life via her phone - so having something that was easy - good flash etc...
Again TMO made it easy and I purchased her a 16Gb model. I think its kind of odd that Apple sizes go 16, 64 and 128GB. Honestly for the hefty price of $649 I would like to have seen at least 32GB as a entry size. TMOs iPhone comes with the nano-SIM installed - but just as with my 735 it was really easy to activate via TMOs web site.
The iPhone 6 is light, very thin and good feel in the hand - actually very similar to my 735 as both are very similar in overall size. My 735 is 134.7 x 68.5 x 8.9mm and weighs 134.3g. The iPhone 6 is 138.1 x 67 x 6.9mm and 129g. I will say the iPhone does feel more slippery in the hand due to the metal shell. And to be honest I can see where this device could bend. It just doesn't feel as sturdy as my 735. Right now I'm going to let my wife try it without a shell or bumper. It always seems to be a shame that Apple designs these beautiful devices and then you have to wrap is some ugly shell to protect them.
Both Apple and Nokia publish 4.7" diagonal measurement for the screen. My 735 is 1280 x 720 @ 316ppi whereas the iPhone is 1344 x750 @ 326ppi. But honestly it's almost impossible to tell them apart. Both are very sharp and clear.
The main cameras are also close in spec - the 735 is a 6.7Mp, f/1.9 capable of supporting 1080p video recording at 30fps and 4x Zoom with Zeiss Lens. The iPhone uses an 8Mp f/2.2 with 1080p 30 and 60fps video capture and 3x zoom.
The 735s 5Mp f/2.4 front camera is much higher resolution than the iPhone's 1.2Mp f/2.2 front camera and can capture 1080p.
Both obviously support all the TMO LTE bands and I've seen similar signal strength that my wife experienced with her Nokia 635 and better LTE strength than my 735. WiFi and BT all worked fine and it easily connected with my wife's car.
From a processor perspective - both phones perform very well - the 735's Snapdragon 400 processor actually supports more threads (4 vs 2) and has integrated LTE - but the A8 is 64bit vs 32bit and along with it's dedicated Cyclone and GPU processors is pretty powerful. Both run smoothly and load apps quickly. Screen movement is also excellent on both.
The iPhone obviously has the whole fingerprint reader capability that my 735 just does not have.
Now that we covered the basic hardware capabilities - let's start talking about the OS/UI and the overall experience.
Initial setup was easily - a wizard based walk-through. You can be live in less than 5 minutes. The longest part of setup is going through the fingerprint scan.
While the iOS UI is pretty familiar I do have to say after living with Windows Phone Live Tiles for the last few years - that the overall UI of iOS is really starting to feel old. The icon based UI just looks kind of busy and the home page really provides no real information. Live tiles in my opinion are vastly superior.
In addition the ability to adjust fonts, colors and theme's is just no where near the capability available in Windows Phone. I have to go through several adjustments to get the app screens readable - especially email.
The number of base icons in iOS seems to keep growing - but yet some things you think would be there automatically like Find my Phone or Pages, Numbers and Keynote aren't. While my wife doesn't use them as much as I do - the lack of native apps that provide news, sports, finance, etc just seems odd. It shows that Apple really doesn't have much in terms of backend services.
And then there is setup for things like Mail. Personally I'm not a fan of consolidated inboxes or singular mail apps. My wife uses three main email accounts - one with MS and two with Google. All were easy to setup but compared to Windows Phone not as easy to use. With Windows Phone each mail account got it's own live tile on the screen and so it was easy to glance and determine which accounts recently received mail. With Apple's mail app - you just get the red circle notice of new messages - but no idea which account just received mail. So you then have to open the app - and potentially scan through different mailboxes to determine which account just got mail.
I installed Google's Mail app - but one thing I found was that it did not sync contacts and the readability was poor. I may hack around with it some more - but it's not the greatest experience.
Windows Phone also in my opinion has a vastly superior Messaging capability that it appears Apple is struggling with. With Windows Phone I have it set up that when a text arrives it is automatically read and then you're asked to ignore, reply or quit. While Apple has speech capabilities - it is not automatic. - you have to do this weird two finger swipe down thing and then Siri doesn't understand context and we start to read a whole thread over again. This makes no sense to me and is actually a driving hazard. And while there is the new Hey Siri capability - it only works when the device is plugged in. How stupid is that.
I did configure iCloud for my wife to have a capability similar to OneDrive for uploading photos. I have to work with it some more to see if that's what I'm going to stay with or switch to OneDrive. Due to my wife's previous Windows Phone account has some 15GB of OneDrive storage whereas iCloud is only 5GB.
I also configured Apple Pay. We'll see if that provides any real value. I think the concept is cool and obviously apple has gotten serious buy in from the banks - so we'll see how this progresses.
The nice part was going out to the AppStore and being able to load all of the apps my wife really uses - from banking to social to starbucks. If Apple has an advantage over MS its there. Same with iTunes - you want a particular song or video - it's fast and easy to find and get.
Bottom line - the iPhone 6 is a pretty nice piece of hardware. But I do not see an over double the price tag difference in terms of specs or capabilities when compared to my Nokia 735.
Also as much as I criticize MS in this blog for issues/capabilities of Windows Phone the basic navigation and apps provided by Windows Phone in my opinion are superior. The IPhone has a clear advantage in the fingerprint scanner, availability of applications and overall store experience.
What is going to be very interesting to watch is how well my wife adjusts to iPhone and if after a few months she'll be asking to get her Windows Phone back.
My primary reasons were
1. My wife is very familiar with iOS UI - she's had an iPad mini for a couple of years and is very comfortable the UI
2. With some of her activities - she uses apps that simply aren't available for Windows Phone. Just the reality of the Windows Phone market share.
3. She needed a better camera than her 5Mp Lumia 635 - my wife really documents my granddaughters life via her phone - so having something that was easy - good flash etc...
Again TMO made it easy and I purchased her a 16Gb model. I think its kind of odd that Apple sizes go 16, 64 and 128GB. Honestly for the hefty price of $649 I would like to have seen at least 32GB as a entry size. TMOs iPhone comes with the nano-SIM installed - but just as with my 735 it was really easy to activate via TMOs web site.
The iPhone 6 is light, very thin and good feel in the hand - actually very similar to my 735 as both are very similar in overall size. My 735 is 134.7 x 68.5 x 8.9mm and weighs 134.3g. The iPhone 6 is 138.1 x 67 x 6.9mm and 129g. I will say the iPhone does feel more slippery in the hand due to the metal shell. And to be honest I can see where this device could bend. It just doesn't feel as sturdy as my 735. Right now I'm going to let my wife try it without a shell or bumper. It always seems to be a shame that Apple designs these beautiful devices and then you have to wrap is some ugly shell to protect them.
Both Apple and Nokia publish 4.7" diagonal measurement for the screen. My 735 is 1280 x 720 @ 316ppi whereas the iPhone is 1344 x750 @ 326ppi. But honestly it's almost impossible to tell them apart. Both are very sharp and clear.
The main cameras are also close in spec - the 735 is a 6.7Mp, f/1.9 capable of supporting 1080p video recording at 30fps and 4x Zoom with Zeiss Lens. The iPhone uses an 8Mp f/2.2 with 1080p 30 and 60fps video capture and 3x zoom.
The 735s 5Mp f/2.4 front camera is much higher resolution than the iPhone's 1.2Mp f/2.2 front camera and can capture 1080p.
Both obviously support all the TMO LTE bands and I've seen similar signal strength that my wife experienced with her Nokia 635 and better LTE strength than my 735. WiFi and BT all worked fine and it easily connected with my wife's car.
From a processor perspective - both phones perform very well - the 735's Snapdragon 400 processor actually supports more threads (4 vs 2) and has integrated LTE - but the A8 is 64bit vs 32bit and along with it's dedicated Cyclone and GPU processors is pretty powerful. Both run smoothly and load apps quickly. Screen movement is also excellent on both.
The iPhone obviously has the whole fingerprint reader capability that my 735 just does not have.
Now that we covered the basic hardware capabilities - let's start talking about the OS/UI and the overall experience.
Initial setup was easily - a wizard based walk-through. You can be live in less than 5 minutes. The longest part of setup is going through the fingerprint scan.
While the iOS UI is pretty familiar I do have to say after living with Windows Phone Live Tiles for the last few years - that the overall UI of iOS is really starting to feel old. The icon based UI just looks kind of busy and the home page really provides no real information. Live tiles in my opinion are vastly superior.
In addition the ability to adjust fonts, colors and theme's is just no where near the capability available in Windows Phone. I have to go through several adjustments to get the app screens readable - especially email.
The number of base icons in iOS seems to keep growing - but yet some things you think would be there automatically like Find my Phone or Pages, Numbers and Keynote aren't. While my wife doesn't use them as much as I do - the lack of native apps that provide news, sports, finance, etc just seems odd. It shows that Apple really doesn't have much in terms of backend services.
And then there is setup for things like Mail. Personally I'm not a fan of consolidated inboxes or singular mail apps. My wife uses three main email accounts - one with MS and two with Google. All were easy to setup but compared to Windows Phone not as easy to use. With Windows Phone each mail account got it's own live tile on the screen and so it was easy to glance and determine which accounts recently received mail. With Apple's mail app - you just get the red circle notice of new messages - but no idea which account just received mail. So you then have to open the app - and potentially scan through different mailboxes to determine which account just got mail.
I installed Google's Mail app - but one thing I found was that it did not sync contacts and the readability was poor. I may hack around with it some more - but it's not the greatest experience.
Windows Phone also in my opinion has a vastly superior Messaging capability that it appears Apple is struggling with. With Windows Phone I have it set up that when a text arrives it is automatically read and then you're asked to ignore, reply or quit. While Apple has speech capabilities - it is not automatic. - you have to do this weird two finger swipe down thing and then Siri doesn't understand context and we start to read a whole thread over again. This makes no sense to me and is actually a driving hazard. And while there is the new Hey Siri capability - it only works when the device is plugged in. How stupid is that.
I did configure iCloud for my wife to have a capability similar to OneDrive for uploading photos. I have to work with it some more to see if that's what I'm going to stay with or switch to OneDrive. Due to my wife's previous Windows Phone account has some 15GB of OneDrive storage whereas iCloud is only 5GB.
I also configured Apple Pay. We'll see if that provides any real value. I think the concept is cool and obviously apple has gotten serious buy in from the banks - so we'll see how this progresses.
The nice part was going out to the AppStore and being able to load all of the apps my wife really uses - from banking to social to starbucks. If Apple has an advantage over MS its there. Same with iTunes - you want a particular song or video - it's fast and easy to find and get.
Bottom line - the iPhone 6 is a pretty nice piece of hardware. But I do not see an over double the price tag difference in terms of specs or capabilities when compared to my Nokia 735.
Also as much as I criticize MS in this blog for issues/capabilities of Windows Phone the basic navigation and apps provided by Windows Phone in my opinion are superior. The IPhone has a clear advantage in the fingerprint scanner, availability of applications and overall store experience.
What is going to be very interesting to watch is how well my wife adjusts to iPhone and if after a few months she'll be asking to get her Windows Phone back.
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