It’s not often that Ms. D suggests that we head to the Apple Store… but that’s what we did on Saturday after stopping by Latinfest to throw JFP t-shirts to the crowd.
Why? She wanted to see the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and decide which one she’s leaning toward — spoiler alert — she’s thinking 6 Plus.
That surprises me a little because I’ve never thought of Ms. D as the “phablet” type (and, quite frankly, I’m fairly certain she’ll never use that word). Still, it makes sense — she hauls her iPhone around in a purse most of the time and won’t feel the size is an encumbrance; what she will enjoy is the full glory of her social media — particularly Instagram — on the 5.5″ screen. And reading magazine stories (something she does for a living as well as for a pastime) should be that much more enjoyable, especially considering she and I are both upgrading from iPhone 4s.
Me — I’m looking straight at the iPhone 6; a nice upgrade in size, but still pocket-able both in jeans and sports coat. And I’m looking forward to spending a little more on the 6 so as to get 64GB of space; my current 16GB in not enough for the photos and videos I like to shoot.
Everything else looks good on the iPhone 6. My one reaction from holding it is that it feels maybe a little cheaper and less substantial than the 4 and 5 series phones, although, by the same token, the 5 series now looks immediately dated.
After handling both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Ms. D declared the iPhone 6 Plus in the lead, and mentioned again later in the evening, a sign that there is now a Plan.
We currently use C Spire, a Mississippi-based company (and occasional JFP advertiser, FYI) that offers excellent plans and really good signals around Mississippi (as I understand it, they own many of the towers around here that they rent to others) although C Spire is currently sold out of the iPhone 6 Plus and the higher-capacity iPhone 6, so it looks like we’ll be stuck until they get more inventory… unless another carrier lulls us away.
I’ll update when we unbox!
Todd Stauffer 
Update: I went with the iPhone 6 and received it last week — C Spire somehow managed to deliver the iPhone to me in one day after I ordered it… I still wonder if the UPS guy lives there or something.
I’ll say for the first two days I had it, I had some serious trepidation. It felt *too* slim — weight and size were OK — and too slippery to trust myself with. Plus one-handed operation was really tough to get used to.
Since my $10 Diztronic Case
arrived, however, I’ve been really happy with the iPhone. Now it feels secure in my hand, the whole thing is matte black (I’m not the silver’s biggest fan) and I can lay the phone upside down.
I’m even getting used to the size of the screen and the button on the side; I’ve noticed myself whipping the phone out a lot this weekend to check scores and read stories. I still have to switch over to two hands for some functions, such as Gmail buttons at the top of the app. (I know there’s a feature to actually pull the top of the image down with one hand but I haven’t gotten there yet.)
Best of all? The speed. Noticeably faster than my iPad Mini (first generation) I can see the benefits of the processor. And I got the model with 64GB of storage, so I’m ready to take some photos for the JFP and myself.
Next step… upgrading to Evernote from Apple Notes to see how I like it *and* to see if I can turn this iPhone into an even more productive mobile device by taking more pictures of documents and storing them for retrieval in Evernote. We’ll see!