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Comment by gamechangr | Hacker News Reader

I have a 6S and a company that will pay to upgrade my phone anytime. What am I missing?

You know innovation is slowing when I don't think it's worth the hassle to upgrade and it's effective free for me (since my company will pay for it).

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I just upgraded from a 6s last week to an Xs. I mostly did it for the camera to take family pictures. Otherwise, it still worked pretty well.

The battery is lasts significantly longer. I kept and eye on my old phone and it was still at 90% capacity. With the 6s, I'd /usually/ make it through the day, but doing anything hefty and I might not. I purposefully stopped charging the Xs during the day today because I was curious and my phone is slightly under 50% charged in the late evening.

I bought a few wireless chargers my wife never used so I tried those. I really like it, especially at night. I think I was using an underpowered power adapter, which is why my wife had problems and gave up on it. My 6s would get pocket lint stuck in the lightning port and a few times a year I'd have to dig it out with something. I think recently the port itself on the 6s was probably getting worn out because more and more of my chargers were finicky.

I really like face id. I liked touch id, but often my hands would be wet or I'd be wearing a glove. It would be kind of annoying to move your thumb over to open your password manager or bank app. Face id is noticeably more convenient even after a day or two.

The camera is great, the speaker is noticeably louder, it's nice to get the shortcut for the flashlight on the lock screen.

I'm still getting used to the OS changes on the new phone. I had to look up how to power it off. Using swipe for Home and the other gestures were pretty easy to get used to. I'm not a fan of using the top-right for control center because I can't use one hand for it anymore. It feels slightly bigger and heavier than the 6s, but I miss having something the size of the 5. I also think it's silly that it comes with a 5w charger.

When was the 6S's battery last replaced?

I got my 6S's battery replaced on New Year's Eve to take advantage of the discounted price. I wasn't actually expecting much improvement, because the phone was only a year old and the battery supposedly had 85% of its original capacity.

To my surprise, the new battery has in fact made a huge difference. It used to be that when I left work, my phone had somewhere between 15%-25% remaining, if that. Now, it always has a comfortable 50%-60%

Same experience here.

I replaced the battery after maybe two years and it was a night/day difference.

That's part of why I haven't bothered to upgrade (OP here)

It was the original battery and iOS was saying 90% capacity. I had been watching the capacity since it was added to iOS and originally intended to swap it out with Apple for the $30 (or just replace it myself, like I have for previous iPhones). I really think if that's the only concern, replacing the battery has always been a huge cost/benefit most people don't seem to think about.

The 6s has a 1715 mA·h battery versus the Xs' 2658 mA·h. This is why still including the 5w charger is silly. Charging with this was already slow on the 6s. It's really hard to quantify usage, especially when the chips are so different. I really noticed the battery life start dipping when I switched to Bluetooth headphones when using the 6s. I'm hoping on the Xs either that Bluetooth is more optimized, but even if it isn't the same draw will drain a smaller percentage of the battery.

The main thing I was hoping to capture in my reply was the little, less concrete things about the update. I usually skip a few generations and a lot of the game changers are small, personal things that don't always jump out in reviews. As an old example, I don't often use AirDrop, but when I finally updated all of my devices to support it, it's way easier than messing with Dropbox, using some app with a web server, connecting a cable, or using a usb or memory stick. Other times it's better radios that power on more quickly, are faster, or more reliable.

You're missing that everyone is different.

A lot of people really care about the quality of the camera and the overall speed of the experience since they spend 10 hours a day on it. Don't forget that many millennials have a phone but no TV or computer. But equally a lot of people don't care about those things. And probably most of these are like yourself happy to stay on the 6s.

As Tim Cook said as long as you're happy that's all that matters because at some point you will upgrade and you will likely stay with Apple. Just not every year like maybe you used to.

Well, you'd get a super nice OLED screen with much more real-estate, but with small enough bezels to not significantly increase the size of the phone. The camera would be better, the speakers would be stereo, and web pages would load slightly faster.

You'd give up a headphone jack, which is the big dealbreaker for me, but for a price of free... eh, I could see why you might upgrade.

Better Camera. 6s is good for day but potato at night. At my job I take lot pictures of signed documents, I find the camera on XR to focus faster and take sharp photo's.

The iPhones are pretty bad at night compared to the pixel 3. Why not get that if your job depends on it?

Or even buy a small compact camera with a decent lens, thereby decoupling photography from mobile computing.

I said the same, happily using my perfect sized 5S. I got an iPhone X as a gift, but it took me over a week and literally cracking my 5S screen to bother with the update.

Battery life (5S was failing though). OLED screen is amazing. Screen real estate is great. It's a bit to big for my small hands, but it rarely gets in the way (I use assistive touch quite heavily though). Camera is good but nothing I care too much about. Swipe gestures (in lieu of buttons) is great (quick switching between apps). Tap screen to wake up (maybe existed before?) is nice.

I'd say do the update. I can't see myself using anything else going forward (until I'm forced to update in a few years I guess).

I feel like since 6s (mine is the plus) the iPhones are running just fine with all the iOS updates and it has probabaly impacted the purchase of newer iPhones. You can get it for free, but in my case I don’t see the reason to spend over a thousand dollars for minimal gain (for what I care) over what my current iPhone already does.

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