The iPhone 6 and 6+ buyers and owners thread (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

I owned a very similar Incipio case for the iPhone 5 and liked it. I'm very happy with my current Spigen Thin Fit for the 6, though I'm also interested in the Speakeasy 3.5 (for 3.5mm thickness). I bought the Spigen because it had a fully open bottom of the phone which I need for a large headphone connection base for my Westone UM3X. The Speakeasy 3.5 seems to also have that open bottom, but the top is now covered (and should be, since Apple moved the standby button that was on top of the phone to the right side. So it offers top-of-phone protection but is also thinner than my current Thin Fit.

The Incipio in that article, assuming it's similar to the one I owned for the 5, is moderately thicker than the Thin Fit I have, and much thicker than the 3.5 I'm interested in.

My other purchase for the phone will be for the most crystal-clear protective film that doesn't impact the quality of the screen, and feels as close as possible to the original glass front. Will wait a few months to let reviews and comparisons appear online, though I see Spigen will release their Ultra Crystal film (which I had for the 5 and was happy with) at the end of the month.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

It's mostly not hard. I turned off Facebook background updates. And I don't watch videos, stream music, or download apps and podcasts on cell.

I've turned off Overcast cell updates to see if that was a cause of battery problems; watching for data use benefits is a secondary interest.

Hmmm... Out of curiosity, just checked my iPhone5c (running iOS 7.12) to see its cellular data usage, and it says current period usage is 2.8GB(?!?). That can't be right. Does "current period" just mean since the last time I reset statistics, which was back in mid-March (probably not long after I got this phone)? Seems likely given "current period" for calls come pretty close to the "lifetime" stat. That's a pretty lame stat.

I don't really care since it's a company phone and I also don't use it for much of any data away from WiFi, but still seems pretty lame.

My wife's Note 2 seems to use only ~200-300MB/month whenever I bother to check (and yes, it comes w/ actually useful data usage tracking and warnings/cutoffs, if you want), but of course, Verizon doesn't give you the option of a small enough plan to save a little $ there. That's in large part why I went w/ T-Mo for my son's smartphone instead...

_Man_

 

[DaveF]

Hmmm... Out of curiosity, just checked my iPhone5c (running iOS 7.12) to see its cellular data usage, and it says current period usage is 2.8GB(?!?). That can't be right. Does "current period" just mean since the last time I reset statistics, which was back in mid-March (probably not long after I got this phone)? Seems likely given "current period" for calls come pretty close to the "lifetime" stat. That's a pretty lame stat.

I don't really care since it's a company phone and I also don't use it for much of any data away from WiFi, but still seems pretty lame.

My wife's Note 2 seems to use only ~200-300MB/month whenever I bother to check (and yes, it comes w/ actually useful data usage tracking and warnings/cutoffs, if you want), but of course, Verizon doesn't give you the option of a small enough plan to save a little $ there. That's in large part why I went w/ T-Mo for my son's smartphone instead...

_Man_

Yes, current usage is from the last time you "reset" its tracking. It's cumulative, perhaps to the initialization of the phone. I don't know why it's that way, because no one ever in the history of data plans cared about lifetime data usage. I'd think they'd connect it to billing date to relevant data usage, but Apple didn't.

To get monthly, either manually reset usage at the start of the billing cycle, or use your carrier's app (AT&T I know tracks monthly usage. albeit with some lag).

I found this weekend that AT&T has a 2GB family share plan with unlimited phone/text that's cheaper than my current 300MB/no text plan. So getting triple the data, and saving ~$10/mo.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

For those that want to use their Mac to make phone calls from their iPhone...

http://continuitykeypad.co

In BETA right now. Works fine. Will be .99 cents when it hits the Apple App Store

 

[McPaul]

So there's that:

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/25/cvs-disabling-nfc-apple-pay/

 

[Sam Posten]

Yeah it's not going to end well for CVS. Apple could just boot their App =)

 

[Carlo_M]

Or erase them from Apple Maps. Not that anyone uses that since the Forstall debacle...

 

[Carlo_M]

Hmmm...more details on CurrentC...not sure how it's better, or even equal to, Apple Pay as far as convenience for both the consumer and the retailer. Apple Pay actually speeds up the check-out process, something those of us who always pick the "winner line" in stores would welcome. CurrentC...not so much.

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/27/currentc-mobile-payments/
http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/25/currentc/

 

[DaveF]

CurrentC reads like something from the brilliant minds that gave us the CueCat. I'm sure they'll do fine discouraging Apple customers from shopping at their stores...

 

[Carlo_M]

It's DIVX and DVD all over again! (For those of us old enough to remember that)

 

[Carlo_M]

And CurrentC is off to a fantastic start.

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/29/currentc-email-breach/

 

[Carlo_M]

So wow, still strong demand for the 6, 6+. Went with a friend who needed a new phone and all the Apple Store had was 16gb in stock of the 6, everything else on backorder. So she went with a 32GB 5S (against my recommendation) but she's not a power user and needed more storage than 16gb.

 

[DavidJ]

My dad has been trying to get a 6 for a couple of weeks now. The AT&T version has been hard to come by. He's checked four Apple stores in multiple states as well as online.

 

[sidburyjr]

I just got my six plus (yesterday). I activated it at about 1 pm (after reading a bunch of instructions and worrying about transferring my music from my old 4s. Anyhow I charged it up fully at about 4 pm and turned off bluetooth. This morning when my alarm rang at 8:30 ( I'm retired so sue me), I noticed that my battery was down to 57%. I did use it a lot yesterday but it was above 80% when I went to bed. This does not match the things I've been reading about the wonderful battery life. Do I have a lemon? Have I inadvertently set up a battery drain app of some kind? Any suggestions?

 

[DaveF]

Give it a day or two. It might be spotlight indexing the phone and updating a bunch of apps or other new phone stuff.Check you don't Maps active with a route running, so it's using the GPS non-stop (that's a battery killer).You can look at the energy usage in Settings and see if a particular app is using an inordinate amount of battery.Make sure you don't have it set to check email every minute.But you might have a battery drain problem. Normal behavior, sitting idle, screen off, the phone should drain no more than about 1% per hour. Some folks have this. My iPhone 5s was behaving poorly for while, until iOS 8.1 came out. That seemed to fix it for me.

 

[Mark Booth]

I've been an AT&T customer since 2007. I'm sick of AT&T so I plan to move to Verizon with my next iPhone purchase. For kicks, I visited a Verizon store today. Here in SoCal, they are offering a $150 credit (to your bill, about 2 months later) if you port a number from another carrier over to Verizon. In addition, they offered me $300 on the spot to trade in my iPhone 5S. The $300 could be used to pay for a new iPhone 6. I'd get the 64 GB model, so it would be $299 (with 2-year contract). The trade-in would cover the cost. I'd still have to pay sales tax and $35 activation fee.

I'm only 13 months into my AT&T contract so I'd have to pay an early termination fee. I estimate it would be $185. The $150 credit would cover most of that.

So, for about $100 total out of pocket, I could move from AT&T to Verizon and get a new iPhone 6.

If Verizon had had any Space Gray 64GB iPhone 6s in stock today, I probably would have pulled the trigger. The $150 credit (to port a number) is good through the end of the month. I'm chewing on it.

Mark

 

[DaveF]

I've been an AT&T customer since 2007. I'm sick of AT&T so I plan to move to Verizon with my next iPhone purchase. For kicks, I visited a Verizon store today. Here in SoCal, they are offering a $150 credit (to your bill, about 2 months later) if you port a number from another carrier over to Verizon. In addition, they offered me $300 on the spot to trade in my iPhone 5S. The $300 could be used to pay for a new iPhone 6. I'd get the 64 GB model, so it would be $299 (with 2-year contract). The trade-in would cover the cost. I'd still have to pay sales tax and $35 activation fee.

I'm only 13 months into my AT&T contract so I'd have to pay an early termination fee. I estimate it would be $185. The $150 credit would cover most of that.

So, for about $100 total out of pocket, I could move from AT&T to Verizon and get a new iPhone 6.

If Verizon had had any Space Gray 64GB iPhone 6s in stock today, I probably would have pulled the trigger. The $150 credit (to port a number) is good through the end of the month. I'm chewing on it.

Mark

Good Luck! I had Verizon for my cellphone and then switched to AT&T, since Verizon sucked so much they didn't even have an iPhone. Now I've been with AT&T for four years and want to switch to Verizon because AT&T has inferior coverage. But Verizon costs more. But I also want to switch away from Verizon Fios to Comcast Xfinity, since Verizon can't stream a simple Netflix HD to my house.

I'm with Homer Simpon on all the telecom companies:

 

[Johnny Angell]

I've been an AT&T customer since 2007. I'm sick of AT&T so I plan to move to Verizon with my next iPhone purchase. For kicks, I visited a Verizon store today. Here in SoCal, they are offering a $150 credit (to your bill, about 2 months later) if you port a number from another carrier over to Verizon. In addition, they offered me $300 on the spot to trade in my iPhone 5S. The $300 could be used to pay for a new iPhone 6. I'd get the 64 GB model, so it would be $299 (with 2-year contract). The trade-in would cover the cost. I'd still have to pay sales tax and $35 activation fee. I'm only 13 months into my AT&T contract so I'd have to pay an early termination fee. I estimate it would be $185. The $150 credit would cover most of that. So, for about $100 total out of pocket, I could move from AT&T to Verizon and get a new iPhone 6. If Verizon had had any Space Gray 64GB iPhone 6s in stock today, I probably would have pulled the trigger. The $150 credit (to port a number) is good through the end of the month. I'm chewing on it. Mark

You do realize you'll be paying extra in your monthly bill to pay for the phone, right? You might not notice since you're already doing that with AT&T. Once you fulfill a contract (and complete paying for the phone), your monthly bill will drop.

 

[Mark Booth]

You do realize you'll be paying extra in your monthly bill to pay for the phone, right? You might not notice since you're already doing that with AT&T. Once you fulfill a contract (and complete paying for the phone), your monthly bill will drop.

Yes, I'm a savvy tech shopper and I'm fully aware of the subsidies that increase the monthly cost of service. However, I was unaware that either AT&T or Verizon actually decreased the monthly service cost once the 2 years was up. ?????It's really not that important because I will almost certainly be upgrading my phone every 2 years at minimum.

BTW, I'm currently paying $74 with tax for my AT&T service (300 minutes, 200 texts, unlimited data). Verizon's single line smartphone plan is $70/month (plus tax) for unlimited minutes, unlimited texts and 1GB of data. On average, I use about 350MB of data per month. Only once in the last 2 years did I exceed 1GB in a month. I'm simply around a good WiFi signal most of the time.

But, my plan would be to go ahead and get Verizon's 2GB single line smartphone plan. That's $75 a month plus tax, so still pretty close to what I'm paying now. I seriously doubt I'd ever need more than 2GB in a month. And if I did, Verizon automatically adds 1GB additional for an extra $15 that month.

I can't wait to dump AT&T! I called them to check on my early termination fee and the rep wanted to know why I was planning to jump ship. So, I told her...

My wife and I like to take road trips (usually with friends) a couple times a year. While AT&T's coverage is very good in most major cities, it can get really thin on roads that are off the beaten path (we try to avoid Interstates when we travel, preferring to take more scenic 2-lane roads). But worse, there are many areas of the country where AT&T doesn't have its own towers ALONG MAJOR INTERSTATES. Instead, AT&T rents bandwidth from other carriers in those areas.

Now, in many cases, the AT&T customer would never know that. In most situations, when an AT&T customer is on a contracted carrier's towers, your phone STILL shows you on the AT&T network. AT&T wants it that way so you don't know just how thin their network can be. However, when you are streaming data (such as listening to Pandora) while you drive, ending up on a contracted off-network carrier can create problems. Here's why...

Even though I have unlimited data through AT&T, my contract limits me to 25MB per month of off-network data. AT&T has to pay a pretty penny for that bandwidth and AT&T doesn't want their customers actually USING that off-network data if they can prevent it. So, we'll be driving along, listening to Pandora, and then a nastigram text message will pop up from AT&T warning me that I'm using too much off-network data.

The first time this happened, I didn't know what the heck was going on. My phone still showed me on AT&T's network. What the heck was AT&T talking about?

Then I got an email that explained the situation. AT&T sent an update to my iPhone that changed the way it indicates network. Now, when my iPhone is in an off-network area, the iPhone shows "off network" instead of "AT&T" in the upper left corner.

Once your phone starts showing you that, you REALLY start to realize how thin AT&T's network really is in more rural areas, including along some major interstates!

So, when other AT&T customers are in those areas (and haven't been nastigramed by AT&T yet), their phones continue to show "AT&T" as the network. What a crock of crap!

The really sad part is just how little data I normally use in a month. I've got unlimited data but rarely use more than 400MB in a month. I'm not out there "abusing" my unlimited data. Yet, AT&T gets its panties in a wad over some off-network use while I'm traveling. Screw them!

Mark

 

[DaveF]

Yes, I'm a savvy tech shopper and I'm fully aware of the subsidies that increase the monthly cost of service. However, I was unaware that either AT&T or Verizon actually decreased the monthly service cost once the 2 years was up. ?????

Apparently they do now, as of a year or two ago. I think Johnny first told me about it; I've subsequently read about it elsewhere.

If you're past the two year commitment, ask about dropping the plan price.