A 40 Year Old Dad’s Week with the iPhoneXS
Does a 40 something Dad with a completely functional iPhone 6 need a brand spanking new iPhoneXS? Of course not! So I wandered down to the Apple store on a Tuesday afternoon and parted with $1,200 anyway. Here’s my take on my first week with the iPhoneXS.
Coming from a long way back
I haven’t had a new iPhone since the beginning of 2015. To confirm, that’s about the same time Bruce Jenner announced that “for all intent and purposes, I’m a woman” which feels like forever ago. Picking up my new iPhoneXS (I opted for the 256GB Space Gray model) it was apparent it’s certainly gone through some transformation since 2015. Much like Bruce, I suspect.
Hand feel and look
The iPhoneXS feels good in your hand. It’s weightier than I was used to and the all glass feel is classy. The almost entire-front-face OLED display is very obviously brighter and more brilliant than the iPhone 6 I’d been burning my retinas on for the past few years. It’s just crisp — like your finger could dip in beyond the polished surface. Of course, I say almost entire-front-face display because there’s the infamous “notch” staring at me like some sort of horned OLED devil. Meh…I’ll get used to it. All up, I feel like a cooler 40-something year old toting this thing around with me and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?
Note on protective cases: Although steel and glass on naked skin is a wonderful feeling, I still insist on getting a cover for the phone. But please, don’t be the sucker who pays upwards of $40 in a store for a plastic encasing probably manufactured for $1.20. For years now I’ve stuck with Caseology cases which are amazing, sleek like you almost don’t notice it and seemingly useful given I’ve never cracked a phone despite several drops. This is the one i just bought for the XS, it’s $14 and it rocks.
Face ID and new gestures
FaceID is infinitely better than TouchID. It just works. Glasses on, glasses off. Hat on, hat off. Off-center glance, right down the middle glare. Daylight, no light. It’s hard to fault it. It’s fast, too. From picking up the phone (waking it automatically) to having it unlocked is a second, maybe a second and a quarter at most. It’s consistently good from about 8 inches to 15 inches from my face — about the perfect picking up and using it distance.
Getting the hang of new gestures (at least, new coming from iPhone 6) was a breeze — they’re all intuitive and make sense. Going from an app back to home screen is now a simple flip of the thumb from bottom of screen. Switching apps is the same gesture with a little more deliberate hold at the end which brings up the carousel of open apps to swipe between. Control center is a little different, swiping down from the right “horn”. It’s the only thing that had some slight element of clumsiness, yet still logical, nonetheless, given the right horn is where the control indicators like battery and signal strength live.
No issues here — I don’t feel like I have to ask a millennial to figure out how to use the iPhoneXS.
Performance
Again — caveating this with the fact I was coming from iPhone 6 with upgrade-encouragement throttling…uh..I mean…peak performance management.
This thing is a Tesla in Ludicrous mode compared to what I’m used to. There is really just no waiting. Apps are spontaneous. The camera app opens immediately in time to actually take a photo of the thing you’re looking at, unlike my 6 where I almost had to give Siri an hour’s notice so she could wind up the camera in time.
Really impressive speed from a mobile device—to stick with the car parlance: she feels like a sporty model that handles really well under throttle. It’s the perfect mid-life crisis phone.
Camera
I enjoy photography as a hobby (check out Insta for some shots). Although I’m not sure anything will ever match photos from a nice Digital SLR, the reality is the iPhone is the camera you have with you most often. Being one of the most hyped features of the new iPhone, I was pretty excited about upgrading from the 2015 tech.
First impressions: It’s really good…great even. Not awesome or life changing (particularly if you’re used to results from an SLR camera with decent lenses) but it can take some pretty photos for something out of your pocket with little setup.
Here’s some photos straight out of the camera:
So the above are straight out of the camera with only the “automagic” processing that iOS does. Photos can look even more exceptional with a little post editing using many of the great third party iOS apps. Here’s a few processed images:
Portait Mode
With a human face and in good lighting, portrait mode on both back and front cameras does a great job, particularly for social media or sharing with family type photos. The slight errors in background blur mean you probably wont want to rely on these as enlarged prints to hang on your wall (although this can be remedied using some great apps…subject of another post) — but they’d impress your Mum printed off and enclosed in her next birthday card. The built-in post editing app includes the ability to adjust the simulated aperture (or F-stop) after the fact to change the amount of background blur which is pretty clever…you can’t really do that on a DSLR.
Of course you’ll take portrait mode photos ad-nauseam of your kids like some kind of weirdo obsessed Dad, just as I do. And most of them will look great, too…you just have to become thick skinned to ignore the insults the kids start throwing at you as they tire of the incessant posing and smiling.
This certainly steps up my game to make me look like an awesome Dad photographer to all my Facebook friends, resulting in that addictive hit of dopamine we’re all looking for each time they hit the like button, right? But honestly, it is a powerful camera for parents who may just be snap shot photographers through to even semi-serious photographers who like to get a little creative.
Shooting Raw
New for me on the iPhoneXS is the ability to shoot in RAW. For non-photographers this probably isn’t a big deal—but for photo-nerds who like to process their own photos, it’s cool.
You need a third party app to shoot in RAW and there are plenty available. I like Halide and Raw+.
Battery Life
This thing must be a beast to power! Yet the battery life is amazing for every day Dad use and even perfectly acceptable for those superdad days when you’re on some sort of phone bender.
With a typical day of a few calls, email, messaging, 30 mins news browsing here and there, checking your stocks, stalking someone on Facebook and ordering stuff you don’t need on Amazon (that’s a normal day, right?) you would be lucky to burn through 50% charge.
If you’re in superdad mode — which might entail all of the above plus a long photo session, an hour or more of photo editing, cooking by Youtube video instruction, a Fornite Royal battle with your kid, analyzing Strava data, installing three apps you’ll never use again and using the flashlight while you fix something under the sink—then I still find you’ll make it comfortably through the day, just with a very thirsty phone as you hit the bed.
Great iPhone for tech Dads
All things considered, if you fancy yourself as a bit of a techno-Dad who likes to keep up with the latest but also have it be practical for your life, then the iPhoneXS should hit the spot. It’ll impress work colleagues, make your kids jealous, force your wife to want to upgrade and actually provide you with a bunch of fun and amazing tech at your fingertips that really is useful everyday.
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