iPhone 5S/6?

[Bromptonboy]

I am extremely happy with my phone (128G six plus) but I have a few concerns.

First of all, I don't know if anyone else experienced this, but I was forced to update my iMac in order to be able to use the phone with iTunes.  What's up with that?  I was running Snow Leopard on my 2009 iMac and never updated because it worked perfectly and met all my needs, and all I read about was how buggy Lion and Mountain Lion were.  But when I tried to plug in my phone I got a message saying the phone wasn't compatible with the version of iTunes I was running, and it turned out I couldn't update iTunes without upgrading my OS.  I was extremely annoyed and felt this should have been something that needed to be made very public before allowing people to buy these devices.  I did a ton of research for weeks before getting the phone, talked to people at the store of course as well, and nothing I read or heard indicated that I couldn't use the phone with the Snow Leopard OS.

It wound up ok, Yosemite was a free upgrade, and fortunately my pretty old computer was able to run it.  It actually turned out great for my computer: the OS runs well, it's kind of like having a brand new computer...but if my computer was any older it could have been a disaster, leaving the phone unable to sync or connect and basically a useless brick.

Other than that, I've noticed some odd bugs that haven't been fixed.  Both my mom and my wife, both with six plusses, have had instances where they had to hard reboot the phone (holding on/off button and home button at same time until reboot occurs) because either the screen froze, or turned off completely and wouldn't respond.  Also there have been issues with charging...sometimes even when plugged in the phone just won't charge, but a hard reset fixed that as well.  I've had weird bugs with the screen orientation...where it seems to lock in place and not realize which way I'm holding the device until I reset to home screen and open the app again.  It happens a lot in texts and email.  And I've noticed when watching videos and pausing in the middle, if I back out of the video to the root menu of the videos app, it doesn't keep where I was cached in memory, even though I have the settings set to do so.  Finally, my wife's phone has twice gotten "stuck" in headphone mode, even when headphones were not attached, meaning the external speaker wouldn't work. 

All of the above seem to be bugs with the operating system and will hopefully be fixed with future iterations of iOS 8.x.

Bugs aside, this is an amazing piece of hardware.  I love having it in my pocket.

I have seen the orientation bug that you refer to - but it will eventually self correct.  I haven't had any occasion to hard reset my phone yet.  It charges up without issue (64GB 6 Plus AT&T).

I thought the big screen might be too much, but I am completely delighted with it.  When I use the old iPHone 4 - I can't believe I was used to that size.

[moyer777]

I'm really enjoying mine.  Amy loves hers as well.  SO NICE!

[Bromptonboy]

So glad I kept unlimited data - as I am using more now that I have a view-able screen.  :)

[Jobydrone]

So glad I kept unlimited data - as I am using more now that I have a view-able screen.  :)

We actually ditched our unlimited data recently.  With the amount I stream in the wild, I was getting throttled every month due to their policy of throttling customers on unlimited plans who go over 5gb in a one month period.  Usually by the middle of the month my speeds halted to a crawl, rendering much of the functionality useless.

We wound up switching to a 30gb shared plan, which we have no chance of going over especially with the new rollover data, and saved $20 a month off our bill to boot.

[Bromptonboy]

Hmm, not bad thinking there.

[Jobydrone]

If I had realized what was going on I would have done it awhile ago

[Bromptonboy]

I should do that - I don't stream near as much as you it seems!

[Jobydrone]

I have a 40 minute commute by train twice a day, so that with my lunch hour equals quite a lot of daily streaming most days. Now that my cable providers mobile app allows on demand streaming over mobile connections I finally feel like the amount I pay for cable, Internet, and my phone service is actually worth it.

[Bromptonboy]

Once HBO go is available without cable I"ll be cord cutting.😃