Checking out the newly rebuilt website I noticed that I’ve not posted any pictures of Chloe for more than two years (I blame Facebook, I just post quick pics there instead of here!); so let’s fix that with this photo I took this afternoon, using the “depth” / portrait feature of iPhone 7 Plus (it blurs the background to make the main subject stand out more):
I’ve been planning to upgrade my iPhone 4S for a while, and yesterday I got lucky and was able to reserve a new iPhone 6 for in-store pickup. The main reason for upgrade is for a better camera – more and more, my phone is the only camera I carry, and the 4S struggles especially in low light. I’ve also noticed a significant drop in battery life on my 2-1/2 year old 4S; and iOS 8 slowed it down horribly!
I wondered for a while whether to get the iPhone 6, or 6 Plus, but the Plus seemed too big to use sensibly when out walking, and anyway it’s even less available so I couldn’t get one with in-store pickup.
So this morning’s walk was my first with the iPhone 6; as often I set off around 6:30am when it’s still quite dark so a good test for the new phone’s low light abilities. So the first picture is around 7am with the first hints of light in the distant clouds; quite happy with that, lower noise than the 4S … a few minutes later I took a picture in “armadillo trail” which is a walkway through some tree filled wetland so quite dark. There’s a spot along that walkway that I tried to photograph yesterday with the 4S, it simply gave a black image – but today the iPhone 6 does quite a reasonable job considering how dark it still is:
As the sun continues to rise, taking pictures gets much easier for the phone (it wasn’t anything like this bright, but all these pictures are unedited straight from the iPhone 6 camera):
As I approach home again, I can see the sun beginning to appear behind the trees, and finally by 7:20am, the sun is up (the finalpicture is at full iPhone 6 resolution if you click it, showing quite good detail in the leaves, but noise in the darker walkway and grass):
Overall, these pictures are a big improvement from the 4S; the new phone is also lighter even though it’s bigger, and many times faster! Touch ID is great too and of course battery life is improved (this one hour walk with GPS logging the route, used only 5% of the battery). And talking of logging my walk, I used a new App called runtime, which worked well and recorded a distance that matches Google Maps to within 5%:
In Massachusetts we always suffered from poor phone service, and as bad as service was at our home there, it was worse at work. Now that we’ve moved, I’ve wondered if there’s a better choice than AT&T which we’ve had for a long time now.
AT&T actually works quite well at our new home, and their pricing has improved dramatically in the last year, but they are still a bit of a devil company … I was interested in T-Mobile since their pricing is even more competitive and they offer great international service. And then recently T-Mobile launched Test Drive which seemed like a perfect way to find out just how good their service is.
Today, the package arrived – an iPhone 5 already configured and ready to try; the T-Mobile website claims “good” coverage, so I was hopeful:
As you see, it’s showing EDGE data, and it’s been like this for maybe five minutes now with no progress. It did at one point show 4G, but didn’t get data to the display, till I walked to a front window of the house – closer to the antenna towers presumably. But seeing as my office is in the back, that’s no good.
I then tried phoning the office; Letizia answered and was pausing a lot when I explained I was just testing the phone service – she explained that she could hardly hear me, I was breaking up a lot.
So that was the end of T-Mobile Test Drive. Did the factory reset on the phone, put it back in the box, and will return it.
I very much like the idea of the Test Drive and I wish that all the companies did something similar – but sadly, T-Mobile remains useless outside of densely populated areas.
M&I / GBMINI 