Larry's Library

(yes my iPhone has S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance.)

So I’ve had a couple requests for me to review my shiny new iPhone 6s Plus an –After-Action-Review if you will. There are tons of great technical reviews of the new iPhones complete with complex benchmarks and lots of graphs but I want to focus on
my transition from a venerable iPhone 4s to the biggest and baddest iPhone so far -the 6s Plus. I will also address the pocket factor and just how easily the big smartphone carries and handles. So here we go.

The pictures above compare and contrast my old iPhone 4s with my new 6s Plus. The 4s is wearing a Monoprice two piece case while the 6s Plus is sporting a ZooGue Social Pro one piece. Both have very similar grip lines on the sides that greatly improves handling especially on that of the somewhat slippery 6s Plus. When I first started carrying the big iPhone 6s Plus I had it wearing an UrbanArmorGear case. It was fine and it fit in all my pants pockets fairly well. I was totally satisfied with the UAG case until I handled my Wife’s 6s Plus that was clad in a ZooGue Social Pro. It felt about 100 times better! Although the UAG is NOT a big and bulky Otter-box like tank it did add a bit of width and length. It seems when you are dealing with something measured best in millimeters a “tiny bit” counts for a lot. I have short little hobbit fingers on short little hobbit hands but I have to say I can handle the big 6s Plus just fine especially with the very slim ZooGue case. It also fits in the pants pockets just a little better with the svelte case. See here:

The picture above shows how the 6s Plus fits in the rear pocket of my Dickies brand denim shorts. Note these are NOT carpenter style jeans. These are very standard size pockets not over-sized in anyway. This works just fine but even with the new three times stronger aluminum formula I still don’t like the idea of sitting on my phone -so you really MUST never forget and sit down without pulling it out! A MUCH better solution is a brilliant little thing Wrangler calls “the Tech-Pocket”:

This is the perfect solution for me. I can sit down and not worry about bending the phone…and it’s very comfortable and easy to get at from a sitting or standing position. I work in a large warehouse where cell-phones (and cameras, radios, coffee, food…and JOY) was until very recently BANNED. This meant you had to carry your phone “concealed”. Fortunately the cell-phone ban was lifted (after several decades!) so that means the little bit of the 6s Plus that sticks out is No Big Deal.

The upgrade from the venerable 4s was a log time coming! Virtually EVERYTHING is better with the larger screen. Reading is better….videos are better…but most of all TYPING is FAR EASIER. With my 4s I did a lot of email reading but very little replying as trying to hit the correct on-screen keys was a most difficult process. I’m still not GREAT with an onscreen keyboard (too old-school I guess) but I am much better with the 6 plus and it’s no longer a painfully frustrating exercise to text or type an email. And don’t let anyone kid you about the additional RAM (iPhone 6 only had 1 GB of RAM….6s has 2GB) the difference it made for Safari is OBVIOUS and a welcome change from the tab reloading BS the 6 (and previous models) suffered with. I suspect many other apps are benefiting from the extra memory as well. For me Live Photos is a flashy gimmick and really not much different than the Animated GIFs from an earlier age (remember those?). 3D Touch is (or rather will be) a revolutionary next step in touch technology. At first glance this looks like a jazzy-think-different way to bring right-click menus to iOS…and it certainly DOES allow for that. I think in time when more developers get behind the tech it will become a very useful way to interact with a touch screen. The potential is there I think. But for now I am enjoying the right click style context menus. I was always (and still am) a Right Click Junkie on Windows PCs. So for me this Is Good. I really can’t complain about much of anything with my new smartphone. I love it. Sometimes bigger really IS better.