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Comment by geophile | Hacker News Reader

My iphone 6 is probably on its last legs. The X phone is too expensive and not available anyway. The 8 isn't that much of an improvement on the 7, so if I don't want an X, I'll probably save money and go with a 7. Sluggish sales for 8 are not surprising.

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I'm in the same boat - I have a 6+ 128gb and it's starting to lag with the most recent iOS. Apple is just going to do Apple things and intentionally slow it down.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I was thinking of buying a refurb 6s+ (I really want a 3.5mm jack) and send it off to apple to refresh the battery and live with that for another 2 years.

The 7 and 8 aren't that interesting in the same way that I haven't updated my late 2013 15" Retina MacBook Pro. If they fix their stupid mistakes (touch bar, deleting the 3.5mm jack) I'll upgrade. Otherwise I'll hold off until the products die and then I'll buy something from their competitors.

How will a refurb 6s help with speed? I assume the infamous slowdown-on-new-OS is due to the new OS being optimized for new hardware, not an old phone "wearing out".

It's my (incorrect?) assumption that going from a 6 to a 6s would buy me another year worth of acceptable iOS speed. My best option may be to deal with the performance and get my 6+ refreshed by Apple.

Thinking about it, I haven't added a new "must use" app in some time. Maybe refreshing my 6+ is the way to go.

The 6s is a lot faster than the 6.

6s doubled RAM from 1GB to 2GB. The CPU was almost twice the performance as well.

I was rather annoyed by how smooth my wife's 6s was when she upgraded versus my (then) year old 6 Plus

FWIW, my current iPhone SE is a 6s with a lesser camera, 4" screen, no 3D Touch, but it's just as zippy and smooth as my wife's 6s (which is buttery smooth with iOS 11).

In fact some benchmarks show the SE performing better than a 6s or 7 in certain cases. Fewer fancy hardware bits to schedule work for, maybe?

I did exactly this. I waited for the announcements, then went and bought iPhone 7 the next day. iPhone 8 is simply not big enough update to justify the price difference, and iPhone X is not something that I'm interested in (price or feature wise).

Count me in since iPhone 7 launch. On the day it launched I didn't find it worthy of the price (and it is missing the earphone jack!) and got myself a 6s. And I'm not upgrading till this phone dies.

I jumped from 6 to 8s and it is astounding the speed difference. I am of the every other generation buyer. That and I am not ready to give up my touch id and habits in how I use it. Throw in that for some reason that notch on the X just bothers me

what made you choose the 8 over the 7?

Not OP but I did the same thing. 7 and 8 seemed comparable but for a pretty negligible price difference, it seemed to make sense to just buy the latest and greatest. Agree that the speed is unbelievable. I was totally fine with my 6 and how it worked until iOS11 came in and wreaked havoc. The 8 + iOS11 is a lightning fast experience and I have no regrets about upgrading.

Same. I have a 5s and I'm tired of running out of storage space, so it's time for an upgrade.

As a Mac fan, I follow Apple news, but even though I watched the press conference I've forgotten if there were any substantial benefits to the 8 over the 7 other than presumably faster specs and a mildly better camera. Seems pretty similar.

I definitely feel no need to grab the 8, and the 7 (or even 6s) seem like good options when one considers the price drops.

iPhone 6S 128GB is a solid choice.

Does it runs iOS 11 smoothly?

My iPhone 6s plus lags almost everywhere on iOS 11. Plenty of free space.

Just a few minutes ago I was reading an e-mail and there was a few second delay for the link to show up on a telephone number. (ie blue underline)

11.1 will likely help a bunch, if the beta is an indication.

I have a 6s 128gb. It was was fast on the latest iOS 10, was acceptable on iOS 11.0, but on iOS 11.1 (currently beta4), it seems as fast as, if not faster than, ever. I think I could happily wait until next year to upgrade, even though I usually upgrade every other year.

I had the 5s. Now have an SE. those are the two best phone apple ever made.

Just put in a (bigger) MicroSD-card...

Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek, however it does remind me of the famous "I need a new car, the tank is empty" (or, in earlier times "the ashtray is full") quote of senseless consumption. Hardware-wise those devices should be able to last much longer than this, were it not for the planned obsolescence of limited memory space, OS-update mandated slowdowns and eventual abandonment.

Hardware can last a long time if it is made to last. It can remain useful for many more years than the 2- or 3-year update cycle. My phone is 6 years old, I'm typing this on a 13 year old laptop, both still work fine for daily use. Both have user-replaceable parts, both can be upgraded.

Both run free software.

The problem is that the combination of an old iPhone and a new OS tends to suck. And batteries wear out.

I know a few people who were in need of new phones and went with iPhone 7s even though the 7 is out, probably based on similar reasoning to yours.

There is no 7s. I think you mean that they went with the 7 instead of the 8.

(I think he was just pluralizing "iPhone 7")

Yeah. I saw a similar article to the one linked above and wrote about my own thinking: https://jakeseliger.com/2017/10/18/apple-isnt-selling-as-man..., which is similar to that expressed here.

A similar argument could be made for 6s to 7 though (and I suspect a lot of people did make that argument), so there will be plenty of 6/6s people out there who will see it as an improvement.

From the circle of people I know, it's rare to upgrade every model. Every other model upgrades seem more common.

I compared an 8 Plus to my wife's 6s (non-plus).

There was little perceptible difference in speed when navigating around iOS generally.

Heavier hitting apps loaded faster, but not noticeably so.

Slack behaved exactly the same, even scrolling through long histories.

I ended up getting an iPhone SE to save money ($175 credit for my iPhone 6 Plus helped). It's a 6s with a lesser camera, 4" screen. Runs smooth as butter.

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