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Comment by ramphastidae | Hacker News Reader

Don't get your hopes up. This has nothing to do with the iPhone SE. No 4" display, no headphone jack, no aluminum unibody, no physical home button.

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No headphone jack, no credibility.

This continues to guide my purchase decisions.

I got the Airpods, and I kinda don't care if there's a headphone jack or not as much anymore... Then there's other styles of wireless headphones too. I love no wire when sitting at my desk on the computer too, so freeing... Also no worry about tangling up the wire if you put them in your pocket, and the case charges it too while on the go.

Was worried about the charging time, but if I get up to go to the bathroom or grab a snack I let them charge up some, and they charge up pretty fast too... So if on the computer all day not a huge issue but if they do need recharged for listening to music, videos, etc not too long... but I have heard people who do a lot of conference calls will switch to one ear at a time to let the other charge which sounds annoying... Also worried about them falling out, so mindful of that if going on a walk outside.

Then after a year or two if heavy using it, the batteries in them are bad and need replaced too I've seen stories of. So another downside, but so do other electronics have batteries that ware, but I assume since Airpods are much smaller it might be more noticable... Just imagine how much of a feat of engineering to make something to tiny.

Also I noticed on my Mac it uses a different codec apparently when using the microphone and it jumps to crappy telephone quality but on my iPhone it seems the same quality as music if talking... But maybe it depends on how new the Mac is and it's bluetooth chip.

Pros and cons I guess, but wireless is the future and things should keep improving I'd hope... and Apple isn't the only option for wireless, Bose and many others. I know Bose has some over the ear noise canceling ones that people recommend for airplanes. Then there's also some earphones that people say is good for outdoor activities as it doesn't cover your ear but is next to it. So maybe some people might own a few different pairs for different uses, right now I only have the Airpods but there's other wireless ones that interest to me for different uses. Not sure if obsessive or not if ever doing that, but then again people own more than one pair of shoes... Gym shoes, flip flops, dress shoes, water shoes, etc...

Yeah one of my bigger issues with wireless headphones et al. are both battery day to day and battery lifetime. For me a year or two isn’t that long. Perhaps I just have to get used to replacing headphone batteries after 2-3 years. I’ve never been able to not lose smaller earphones the size of AirPods so I stopped buying them.

I’m fine using a 2-in-1 iOS charger and headphone jack hardware as backup, but one given by a friend and one bought at an airport both broke really quickly. I’ll have to look online probably to see if there’s a high quality one that isn’t too pricey.

I understand people being against things like this, but like you said at the end, wireless and less wires is the future. I’m already fine with needing to switch to USB-C when I get a new MacBook. Though I wonder when most iOS devices will switch over. I think one of the iPads has, but I’m not sure. It won’t be a big deal until a new iPhone lineup switches over though.

And mine.

You just listed all the features that make the iPhone 6 a pretty darn good phone

For anyone considering a 6S: it's not slow at all, and the camera is just fine. Just bought another one two months ago.

It's probably not getting OS updates (ie. security patches) after iOS 13, though.

Here I am sitting on a several-years-old iPhone 6s and a recently-purchased 2015 Macbook.

When iPhone dies I was planning on getting another 6s[0], but didn't even really consider LTS. Crap.

[0] Mostly for the headphone jack, but I suppose I also prefer touchid over faceid

iOS 12 still supports the 5s. If iOS 13 supports up to the 6, then iOS 14 will likely support the 6s.

iOS 13 drops support for the 6. It'll be 6s/SE and above for iOS 13. It'll be interesting to see what they do for iOS 14. I was surprised that they cut off both the 6 and 5s this year.

It’s cause they know that most users are ok using the old stuff and want to force people to update. The iPhone 5 and 6 were fast enough for most needs

They’ll definitely keep dropping at least one iOS every year on average. Right now the 6S is going to be 4 years old. If they cut back to only 3 year old models. That’s pretty recent. Will be interesting to see if they do that. Removing the 6S Plus is also interesting. I thought maybe they’d give the Plus or higher end models a year longer to incentivize purchasing those.

t’s not really a huge deal to me that they’re likely purposefully going to try to keep the newest iOS limited to only a few years. Supporting 4 year old devices is still pretty good. And being on an old iOS for a few years isn’t the biggest deal.

On one hand bummer about security on the other hand at least you don’t have to worry about apple patching out things that used to work or otherwise messing up the experience

What's wrong with sliding up to switch apps / go 'home'

It made me question why they took so long to get rid of the home button.

Yeah I was put off at first but in general it works perfectly, so I have no complaints at all. Using all available space for the screen is the right design choice, I think.

I still haven’t mastered it. I trigger it when I don’t want to and can’t trigger sometimes when I want to. I’m still only about 50% successful bringing up the app switcher.

You don’t slide up to switch apps, you do it to go home.

To switch apps you have to do an extremely frustrating gesture that shows you the app switcher half the time and the other half of the time it’s switches you directly to the previous app.

I’ll never buy an iPhone without a home button unless they fix the accessibility software home button so that it doesn’t sit right on top of the icons and the rest of the user interface. They should have at least given you an option to have a row of software buttons like Android does.

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