Just before I went to Europe last year, I upgraded my phone from an iPhone 5 to a 6 Plus. Having read the reviews online (and having taken big swigs of the marketing Kool-Aid), I figured I could use the Plus to combine the jobs of both tablet and phone in one device.
After a year with Apple’s phablet, I have to conclude that rather than combining the best aspects of phone and tablet, it combines their drawbacks much more noticeably: it’s too big to make a convenient phone, and too small to make a decent tablet. I was constantly put off by the size when I used it as a phone–reaching icons on the other side of the screen was awkward, even with my big hands and Apple’s little home button double-tap sliding-of-the-screen trick. And when I tried to use it as a tablet substitute, the lack of screen real estate didn’t really let me use it efficiently. I also managed to bend it ever so slightly, enough that the phone would not sit level on a desk even face-down, and putting it into a protective case made a huge phone even larger and more cumbersome.
So I finally admitted defeat and traded the 6 Plus for an iPhone SE. My wife had the regular 6, so I was familiar with the size and handling, but it didn’t fit me all that well either. I think it’s Apple’s insistence on making the phones both very thin and round the corners at the same time, so the whole thing feels like a slick, skinny river stone. (Robin dropped hers on numerous occasions and had the screen replaced once.) And I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the smaller phone again. It’s much, much easier to use with one hand. And I find that I am now using the phone for phone jobs again, and don’t try to force it to be a tablet. If I need to dash out a text or a quick Tweet, I can do it on the phone. For anything else, I can get the iPad or laptop out, and get the job done more efficiently than trying to make it work on the not-quite-a-tablet iPhone 6 Plus.
Oh, and the Apple Watch really comes into its own when you use it with a smaller phone like the SE. With the Apple Watch’s ability to reply to texts or take quick hands-free calls, I can just about leave the phone in my pocket all day. If something pops up on the watch that requires a quick response, I use a canned reply or dictate one. And if it requires more than a sentence, I wait until I can get to the iPad or laptop, and no longer pry the phablet out of my pocket to peck out an email on it.
The phablet makes sense for some people, and I know that some of my friends dig theirs a lot. It didn’t work for me, because I generally use specialized devices for specific jobs and no longer try to do the technological Swiss Army Knife thing.
I phones are too thin and slick for me — they don’t come into their own until encased in an Otterbox Defender. At that point they’re both a reasonable size and pretty much non-slip. When I was thinking about an upgrade from the 5S, I bought the Otterbox cases for both the 6S and the 6S Plus — and decided on the 6S as a result. You’d think the Otterbox would make it enormous — but with the thinner phone and the rounded edges it’s not much larger than the 5S was — while giving me a much larger screen to read books on.
Yep — the iPhone is my primary reading device for non-technical books. It does many things well enough that I can usually leave the larger devices at home for the day.
Beloved spouse on the other hand though long and hard about the iPhone SE before deciding on the real estate upgrade of a 6S for herself — and she still complains about difficulty whipping her phone out of a pocket.
Everything, from vehicles to pocketknives, that tries to do *all the things* usually doesn’t do any one thing exceptionally well. I, too, am in the ‘right tool for the job’ camp.