I recently upgraded my iPhone and I am required by the Nerdy Web-person’s Guild to write about it. I try not to give into silly temptation and upgrade my phone every single year. The bi-annual upgrade cycle is silly enough.
The iPhone 4S is a huge step up from the 3GS in so many ways. It seems like a radically different device. The “Retina” display is shockingly sharp and so much easier on the eyes when reading an email or scanning a web site. The 4S (naturally) performs much, much better as well. I was pleasantly surprised to see “Grand Theft Auto 3” had been ported to the iPhone. If you can play games like this on your phone, why does anyone need an Xbox?
Siri is more useful than I expected. I find myself using Siri to get the weather, set timers, reminders, and appointments far more than anything else. For all of these actions, the speakable interface via Siri is faster than bonking around through a bunch of screens and forms to do the same task. If I drove more I’m sure the voice dialing and SMS features would be useful too.
None of this is new information to anyone who pays attention to iPhones. But maybe the interesting thing is that I chose to downgrade to a 16GB iPhone from a 32GB. I chose the large storage capacity for my 3GS because I liked the idea of carrying all of my music with me. In reality though, I’m rarely someplace where I can’t get to a particular song if I want it. I’m usually at home, or at my office where I’m on WiFi. Thanks to iTunes Match I can easily duplicate my iTunes library across all computers I use, or I can just download a song to my phone if I really need to and I’m away from my computer.
Also, my 3GS still exists. It did not evaporate the moment I bought a new iPhone. And since it exists I can use it as an iPod whenever I need all of my music.
Using an old iPhone as an iPod
The helpful fellow at the Apple Store recommended that I remove the SIM card from my old iPhone if I want to use it as an iPod. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Unlike an iPod, an iPhone requires a SIM card (activated or not) in order for software restores and updates to run. If you yank out the SIM card, the phone will work – but if you need to do a restore or update the software it will go ‘bonk’.
I simply keep the old phone in “airplane mode” with WiFi enabled. I’ve rearranged all the home screen icons so that the phone-y bits are all tucked away in their own folder where they won’t get poked at by accident.
