Early Thoughts on iPhone 6 and Software Updates

As I write this, we are await­ing the arrival of Apple’s lat­est and great­est iOS 8 upgrade. This will hap­pen in about 1 week (Sep­tem­ber 17^th or 19^th). I’ve been test­ing iOS 8 for the past 3 months and real­ly like it. The best part about iOS 8 over the cur­rent ver­sion is yet to come. What I mean is that iOS 8 is sup­posed to be the best update for iOS devel­op­ers. Apple has sup­pos­ed­ly made it much eas­i­er for devel­op­ers to cre­ate far greater fea­tures than ever before. If this is true, busi­ness users of the iPhone and iPad can expect some updates as ear­ly as this fall that will hope­ful­ly blow you all away! I’m keep­ing my fin­gers crossed!

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I’ve only been able to test Apple’s updates to iOS 8, not any new apps. With the new fea­tures alone, it is a wor­thy upgrade that many of you will come to enjoy. I can’t wait to see what some of my favorite apps will be able to do in the com­ing months.

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus thoughts:

Bat­tery

The num­ber one com­plaint I hear from iPhone users is how the bat­tery life sucks (lit­er­al­ly). Based on yes­ter­day’s keynote from Apple, I can almost guar­an­tee the two new iPhones com­ing out next week will not be an improve­ment. This is quite dis­ap­point­ing from a busi­ness stand­point because many of my clients do not sit at a desk. They are active in the field using quite a bit of talk time and data. Ear­ly rumors say the iPhone 6 Plus (5.5″ screen) will be about 20% bet­ter on bat­tery life for video among oth­er things. This might be one rea­son to upgrade to the larg­er device. This is what I plan to do.

Screen

I did not hear any good news about the phones dura­bil­i­ty. Chances are, at least for anoth­er full year, we will all have to buy the extra insur­ance or invest in large, ugly, cas­es that real­ly don’t do much either (hint: no insur­ance on a phone that breaks even in a case).

Size(s)

If you decide to upgrade to the 4.7″ screen size, I think you’ll be quite hap­py with your selec­tion. I test­ed a 4.7″ screen ear­li­er this year on an android (that was the same as the iPhone) and absolute­ly loved the expe­ri­ence. So a great call by Apple here! It is far eas­i­er to read arti­cles and get things done on a big­ger screen.

For the iPhone 6 Plus, this one intrigues me. I am not sure until I hold it in my hands how I will like it. I am guess­ing I will like the big­ger screen for a few rea­sons. I do not nor­mal­ly use my iPhone as a tra­di­tion­al phone, where I hold it up to my ear. I use a Bose ear­piece when mak­ing or receiv­ing calls. I don’t mind a big­ger screen if I am main­ly using my device for work­ing pur­pos­es. I am also using an iPad Mini, which is not that much larg­er than the iPhone 6 Plus. It is pos­si­ble that many of my clients and I could cut out the iPad alto­geth­er and use one device. It seems to be the per­fect size for field employ­ees to do their check­list, take pho­tos, use their cal­en­dar fea­tures, and so on. I’ll update this post once I’ve expe­ri­enced the new phone.

Soft­ware for Business

Apple will be rely­ing on devel­op­ers to pro­mote the iPhone 6, as a busi­ness friend­ly device. Apple con­tin­ues to focus and mar­ket to the con­sumer: indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies. I have not been impressed with the cloud soft­ware Apple has pro­duced to date: Keynote, Pages and Num­bers to name a few. They are super slick look­ing, but they do not com­pare to Google Dri­ve’s prod­ucts or Microsoft. On top of that, their new iCloud Dri­ve seems quite focused on the per­son­al and fam­i­ly expe­ri­ence. I am sure a busi­ness can switch to Apple’s new cloud prod­ucts and make it work. As of Sep­tem­ber 2014, Microsoft 365 and Google Apps for Work, take the cake. Pri­mar­i­ly, I will be uti­liz­ing Google prod­ucts and using Apple hard­ware. If Google and Apple con­tin­ue to play nice­ly, I’ll keep it this way. As far as I can tell, they have no choice but to work together!

Final­ly, do you need to upgrade to the new iPhone 6? I have not addressed all the new fea­tures on the iPhone 6 devices, such as NFC (mak­ing and receiv­ing pay­ments with Apple Pay)! I can see some ben­e­fits to upgrade your crews to the iPhone 6 Plus, if you have future plans on get­ting your employ­ees iPads. How­ev­er, I would not be in a hur­ry to upgrade. We can still func­tion with the devices we have and use dai­ly. I will say, if you are on an iPhone 4S or iPad 1 or 2, it is time to upgrade. Devel­op­ers will and have stopped sup­port­ing old­er devices.

Let me know what you all decide to get and why. Let’s hope fall 2014 iOS updates will make our busi­ness­es even more effi­cient and productive.