I agree that the smartphone market has matured and more nuanced reviews would be welcomed, I honestly just don’t think your review provided any of that. You correctly identify there’s a variety of consumers from “normal” people who like to keep phones for many multiple years up to techno fans who happily buy yearly (guilty as charged), but to suggest that there’s little innovation in units year-over-year is a weak position, and surprising from someone in your role who should be all over reporting on that kind of thing. To me, the maturation in the market has shifted from screens and phone sizes to computational photography and machine learning, and I thought an opportunity was lost to share that insight to readers. The next 5-10 years are going to be just as amazing with innovation, not just from Apple but other manufacturers, and your original review read more as a jaded reviewer seemingly lacking passion about the industry he’s reporting on. Educate us about that future!!
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The iPhone 6S and 6S Plus are supported by iOS13.
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With 5G on the horizon, there seems to be no point in purchasing current cell phones that do not support it.
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For me as someonefrom Europa it feels really strange that according to the NYT smartphone is equally iphone.
We here in Europe have dozens of smartphone brands. After Iphone6 Apple was not any more on top of the evelopment and others took over. When I see today smartphones like Xiaomi Mix Alpha or Huawei Mate X I'm very impressed.
But the US becomes because of the nationalist ideology by the government more and more protectionist and people are trapped in the year 2015.
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My i Phone 6 is a really GREAT phone
However its planned obsolescence by Apple led me to buy the new iPhone 11
My new I Phone 11 is faster and well GOOD
I only upgrade when the OS will no longer run on my iPhone. I also take the same approach for my laptop and tablet. It usually works out to about five years as you say.
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Turning the flash on is a horrible idea
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Why don't you stop reviewing anything then? Why limit your strange, condescending philosophy to just iPhones?
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You may also "need" a new phone if:
- Your screen is so smashed it looks like the cockpit window of a Brexit spitfire
- To use the old one as a loan phone for guests, on their request, or at your initiative if they bore you. Less data anxiety compared to handing over your phone and spares you outwardly cringing when asked: “hey can I borrow your phone to look something up?” and later “Hey....just so I don’t have to keep asking [implying a longer holding period than expected] what’s you secret code?”
- As the coordinator Send children out to play urban orienteering by finding nearby POIs, where they take selfies instead of collecting flags. One of the most high output / low input games for parents ever. You’d be surprised how many kids can’t read a digital map without step by step directions.
- to appease the child to whom you passed down your old iphone (pre-facial recognition) and whose screen time numbers make you look like you an Uber employee who drives freelance for Lyft at night. Upgrade their phone may stop you having to endure them narrate every metric in everyone’s screen time reports, weekly: “if you needed to enter a code to open it each time Dad, maybe you wouldn’t have such a problem with looking at your phone?”
- You suffer from smart phone paranoia, which can be treated, but only partially and temporarily, by switching to a factory new device and starting a new app garden cleared of weeds
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Your original review – and this explainer – both miss the mark in one important way. These new 11s have dramatically better camera systems than any iPhone before. Saying that the camera in 6S is fine in context of the review is disingenuous and misleading when most of us use our phones for the important pictures of our lives with friends and family, often in low lighting conditions and close quarters where the difference between even last years models and these are quite dramatic. Nobody has to upgrade, but if you can upgrade, this alone is a powerful reason to do so.
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@Sam I understand that the camera is an important feature for some users. However, for many of us it is just one of many lightly used features. I personally always skip over the "camera updates" section when reading the upgrade specs because I know it has minimal if any bearing on my life and use case.
To head off the obvious question: Have I seen the iPhone 11 low light photos and how great they are? Yes!
But would I ever use that functionality? Probably not.
Except for trying to capture majestic landscapes, which an iPhone will simply never be able to do in sufficient detail, I have literally never been disappointed with the quality of a photo from my iPhone 6S.
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What a timely article! I was just going out to buy two new(ish) iPhones today. Thanks for the perspective. This confirms my thought that we should just purchase the used iPhone 8.
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@Jennifer - Actually I decided to upgrade to the iPhone 6 from the 6.
Curious why you didn't explain all this in the original piece. I didn't look, but I hope now there is a link to this explainer.
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There's another consideration: The need for more stuff. If one is concerned about climate change, one should look very closely at consumption and the huge energy cost of producing products. Then there's the impact of mining rare earth metals, landfill, and toxic waste. We don't need (a squishy word) everything we have. It is possible to want too much.
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I’m a professional photographer with a 7 Plus. The phone is absolutely perfect in every way except one: the camera is horribly outdated, particularly as it comes to low noise photos created via modern computational photography actions. It frustrates me to have to get a new phone just for the camera.
One consideration I have is to get a Pixel 3A for its camera, which for $399 is arguably better than even the very latest iPhone camera, and use my existing 7 Plus for all other purposes. Otherwise I am paying an additional $700 for the privilege of having an all-in-one device – but at the expense of losing my beloved fingerprint reader and suffering with Apple’s vomitacious notch.
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Two years ago I bought a 7. (Now we're at 11!) I use it the same way I used my 5s, and 4s, for that matter. It certainly contained many "improvements", most or many of which I am totally unaware of and almost certainly wouldn't use if I was. I didn't notice a difference in speed and have used only a fraction of the storage I bought. Similarly, new iOS's bring game-changing new features like bubbles in text messages and karate emojis. The 7 will be my last "smart phone." Once it becomes functionally obsolete I will switch to a ... phone. I will get used to not having constant access to email and internet. Of course, if those capabilities are important for business or other critical reasons, by all means have a smartphone. But otherwise, I'm never far away from my MacBook Pro, so why duplicate it.
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I don't think there is such a phone as the 11s, which you refer to in the article. (You wrote "So with all this in mind, after testing the new iPhone 11s, I talked to my editor about how things felt different... ") Last year we had the Xs, and next year will probably bring the 11s.
@Calisson I think the sun iPhone 11s denotes a plural, as in the three iPhone 11 models instead of a model number.
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@Calisson D'OH! You were just pluralizing. Sorry!
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@Jim Brown Exactly one minute after I posted my comment I figured out that he meant iPhone elevens, but there was no delete button!
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Hello Brian: Thanks for all this. I wonder what you think -- or what readers think -- about which iPhone is appropriate for a Mac diehard (that's me) who has been getting by with a laptop, iPad, and a burn phone from Wal-Mart for years. It's time for me to buy a real phone, an iPhone, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go straight to the top with the latest iPhone. Maybe I should buy an earlier model and work up to the latest technology? Or is that false economy? I would appreciate thoughts about this!
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Your analysis assumes that we should not upgrade frequently because of the cost, but my upgrade from the Xs to the 11 Pro was pretty much free (I did pay about $112 in sales tax). I paid $68 per month for the Xs, and I pay exactly the same amount for the 11 Pro. Had I not upgraded, I would have continued to pay the exact same $68 for another year, and then upgrade and presumably pay the same mount for next year's model.
Thus, other than the hassle of upgrading, there was no good reason I should stick with last year's phone, even if the advances were only incremental.
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@David Wess
I am the same, pretty much I am leasing the phone never paying full price so there is no reason for me not to upgrade. One of these iterations of the phone, I might decide to buy out the phone and keep it for a few years but upgrading yearly doesn't impact me financially. So I will continue to do it.
Your comments are on point. We have an iPhone 6 and 7. Both are working fabulously. We usually alternate the upgrades every two years but now we are changing to every four. Next year we'll upgrade the 6 to the iPhone 12 and in 2021 the 7 to 13. Simple. Well built phones
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While I think you probably had your heart in the right place, I disagree with the approach you took for your iPhone 11 review. The fact is, most people who are either happy with their phone or are not interested in upgrading, for whatever reason, are not really your target audience. The people who look for your review, either online or in print, have made a conscious decision to seek out your assessment. For these people, telling them why they don't need a new device is condescending and a bit patronizing. If you do not find a new device compelling, people will gather that from reading your review and make their decision accordingly. Its perfectly acceptable to list alternatives to a product at different price points you are reviewing and compare and contrast, to allow people to know what other options are available. Telling people their old phone is fine, even though they sought out your review specifically because they are considering buying a new phone, is not helping them with their decision, which, at the end of the day, is your job.
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@Randolph Watnick -- But that's only if they only read the Times for tech reviews. There will be hundreds of other reviews available from credible sources such as CNET. The Times approach is a good reality check.
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The approach of evaluating whether and when an update is needed/recommended is a good one, but why the holier-than-thou reviewer attitude of acting like every other reviewer is taking a different approach? MOST of the reviews I read this year took the same approach. Acting like everyone else is pushing needless upgrades, when all major review sources seem to be taking a more nuanced approach, is kind of disingenuous.
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When I read a product review, I’m not looking for lifestyle advice, I’m interested in expert observations about the functionality and performance of the product. Whether or not it is a “good idea” to upgrade is opinion, not fact, and different for every reader. I’d prefer to stick to the facts in reporting, and put opinions on the editorial page.
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It is not just a matter of whether we need a new iPhone. It is a matter of whether we actually prefer the old ones.
Apple is no longer selling a pocket-sized iPhone. When the iPhone 6 came out, I went out to buy a new vest with a pocket big enough for the bigger phone. I put a cardboard cutout the size of the new phone in my pants pocket and sat down in the driver's seat of my car. The cardboard dug into my groin. I aborted the shopping trip and haven't bought a phone since.
Some of us don't want to strap a phone to a belt, wear cargo pants, or carry a purse.
You should review not only what got better with new phones but what got worse. Portability got worse.
You should write a guide for people switching to Android because Apple is no longer making a pocket-sized phone.
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@Michael Segal
Do you need a technology reporter’s insights regarding the size of a phone? That does not require analysis; dimensions are easily found on Apple’s website. For those of us wanting to upgrade (I was coming from a buggy iPhone 6S with no interest moving over to Android), the NYT review was useless. Fortunately, I read widely and found reviews that were helpful with my decision making process. And, I carry my phone in my purse, not my pocket. Your portability issues are not mine.
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It would be interesting to know if Brian's advice applies to Android phones as well, given that most only receive updates to the OS for a couple of years. (My 4+ year old Samsung Galaxy phone last received a system update in January 2018). Using a Windows or Mac laptop which hadn't received any OS updates for a couple of years would seem to be pretty risky, so I'm just curious whether the same logic applies to Android phones as well.
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I hope you review Android products too. And everything else for that matter. Your new reviewing philosophy is intelligent and pure common sense, and I join you in wondering why it took so long.
I read classical music record review magazines, and it's long been an article of faith to compare new recordings of musical works to any previous recordings the reviewer can get hold of, to decide whether you should buy the new one if you already own one of the old ones.
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It's not that the NYT put upgrade pressure on me, but Apple did. From what I've been reading iphone 6 will no longer be supported. I guess 5 years is an okay run for a smart phone? My battery requires charging every day, sometimes twice a day depending on use. I had been debating purchasing a new battery, but that's out of the question now. My big question now is should I stay with Apple or move to a cheaper android phone. Over $1000 (Canadian pricing) is a lot to pay for a cellphone.
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I just got the Samsung S10 for 600 bucks (US) on EBay. New but open box. Top phone at a very reasonable price. They seem to be dumping container loads of phones onto the market right now to make their numbers by the end of this quarter.
Apple's high margin is Samsung's opportunity (to quote Jeff Bezos...)
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@Beyond Repair - An open box iPhone would be around the same price, so not quite following the logic.
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I'd like to assure the NYT tech columnists that any worries they may have about putting "upgrade pressure" on me are completely ungrounded. These days, phones are phones are phones, and in-depth coverage of all the megapixel minutia of the latest razzle dazzle release is just not that interesting. Apple desperately wants the circus to go on, but most of us have other things to do.
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I appreciated your original iPhone 11 article because it confirmed my position on holding off the purchase (my wife and I own iPhone 6s devices). I, too, understand that the hype is necessary for Apple’s top line, but as a customer of both Apple and NYTimes, I appreciate that NYTimes is providing me with detailed and timely advice.
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It's Apple's job to introduce something "new and exciting" every year. If they could do it profitably, then would introduce something "new" every week to get people to pay attention.
You, the consumer, don't have to buy into the hype.
This is no different than running out to buy the "new and improved" Tide Detergent every 6 months.
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@Mr. XYZ
Somewhat true. But too simplistic.
When I moved into the "smartphone" realm, it was to the long-awaited Motorola Q phone. Much like the Blackberry, it had a keyboard, plus replaceable battery, FM radio, almost decent camera, micro SD slot (yes, you could off load apps), and some other features that have faded from memory. I continued to use until the iPhone 4. I had to give up on the Q not because it was "outdated" but because the "L" key stopped working and the Q had reached the end of life as a design.
I have had the 4, 6 (still in use), and the 7 (my current phone). Never found the need to use the Plus-size models. But I did find the need for better equipment. Like speed, camera, apps., better wi-fi, better Bluetooth.
The 11 series offers many great features missing from the 8 and X, along with best use of the really new OS, 13.1.
Too many reviewers whine about "no need to update, just feeding Apple for no good reason." Too many readers jump to agree, without any better reason than the one you stated.
If that new Tide detergent is better than what your were using, shouldn’t you use it? A better product works better. Or the results are better. And hype is and has been part of "marketing" for centuries.
Suggest you read Brian Chen's article on the security features and mail options for 13.0. If the 6s can accept iOS 13 and the user is happy with a slower, less responsive, device, fine. All new is not hype.
New is what it is. Your decision. Not Apple's.
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