I have used Android phones since the Gingerbread days. The Samsung Galaxy Y my parents got me ultimately kickstarted my journey into the nitty-gritty of Google’s operating system. I got so deep into Android that my phone had a different Custom ROM installed every week. Fun times.

Wanting to find out if the grass was truly greener on the other side of the fence, I went and bought a brand new generations-old iPhone 6S Plus. Full disclosure: I have been using a MacBook since 2016. Owning said Apple laptop is certainly one of reasons behind the purchase decision.

I purchased an iPhone made four years ago in 2019, and daily drove it until 2021. I had the model with 32-gigabytes of storage. Yes, I was still able to live a modern life with such meager storage capacity. As a matter of fact I still had 8-gigabytes of free space on the chunky old iPhone.

Hardware and Build

What I like about basically every iPhone ever, save for the horrible 5C, is the build quality. Even in 2021, this thing is as solid and premium as the day I first took it out of the box. It has the right amount heft and the right amount of curvatures making it somewhat manageable to handle with one hand despite its large dimensions. Still, the iPhone 6S Plus hasn’t aged too well, in my opinion. While I like the bare scratch-magnet aluminum back, I find that the antenna lines and regulatory markings distract from its otherwise clean look. It is also slippery as hell.

The handset’s buttons have a satisfying click to them and the presence of a physical mute switch is a godsend. The Home button isn’t 3D Touch but it gets the job done. The power and volume buttons being on opposing sides was something I had to get used to. Also, I thought that the power button was a tad too high on the right side of the iPhone which forced to me readjust my grip when I wanted to unlock it. I barely used the home button for waking the screen up because I just wanted to go through notifications on the Lock Screen.

The vibration motor on the 6S Plus is second-to-none. This phone from 2015 with its super-tactile feedback put its current-generation competitors to shame when it comes to haptics. They’re more clicks than buzzes. 3D Touch on the iPhone is super satisfying.

I hate Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector. Even Apple’s own MacBooks and Pro-iPads use USB Type-C. Having an iPhone around also means keeping a lightning cable. It’s just one extra cable but it’s one more thing to think about and I don’t want to be burdened with something this trivial.

Display, Camera and Audio

Up front the 6S Plus is the 5.5-inch Retina display. It is a 1080p screen with a pixel density of roughly 400-pixels-per-inch. While the 16:9 aspect ratio coupled with the chunky forehead and chin scream: “Hello, I was released in 2015.” The screen also suffers under direct sunlight because it doesn’t get very bright. Text look super crisp with the pixels being indistinguishable while colors from the LCD panel are pleasing to my eyes. It keeps the neutral saturation and contrast levels that I’ve come to expect from Apple. It’s a good screen that holds up very well.

The camera very good despite its age. Image quality remains respectable and video is superb. The 12-megapixel sensor is able to capture well-exposed, balanced, and sharp images. Pictures have an overall neutral look that I really like. Video also manages to impress with great image stabilization and quality with similar traits to that of stills. I don’t record in 4K due to the storage constraints I have described earlier. The camera bump isn’t as pronounced as on modern iPhones but it still protrudes, making it unable to lay flat on a desk. Granted, many Android handsets have the same problem nowadays.

While I’m here, allow me to mention that this is the last iPhone to have a 3.5mm headphone port. Even in 2021, I can’t stand the idea of my main cellphone not having this connector. I don’t plan to buy AirPods. The speaker is downward-firing on the 6S Plus and they sound mediocre at best. I don’t use it, like, ever.

Battery and Specifications

Every iPhone has, on the surface, laughable specs. Apple doesn’t play the spec game, but don’t let the meager numbers fool you. The company’s A-series chips are monsters. The dual-core A9 on my decrepit iPhone 6S Plus feels smoother than the octa-core Snapdragon 625 on my Android device. It does, however, show its age as it struggles with running iOS 14. Leaving the camera viewfinder open is enough to make the iPhone really hot. Even navigating around the Apple Music app for a few minutes made it sweat. While the A9 can still get the job done, demanding too much from it clearly reveals its age.

iPhones never had the most system memory in any phone. But where iPhones fall short in RAM, it more than makes up for in software optimization. iOS can keep more apps running the background with 2-gigabytes of RAM than what my Android handset can handle with four. Switching between apps very is fluid. I just let the operating system manage the memory; I never manually close apps from RAM, save for the ones that are misbehaving.

The iPhone’s flash storage is very fast. Apple is using an actual solid-state disk instead of the usual eMMC coupled with a custom controller for said SSD. Such control allows the iPhone to capture photos with zero shutter lag and record hi-bitrate videos without ever dropping a frame. It is seriously an impressive feat. The speed benefits also carry over to day-to-day the user experience. Swiping through the Home Screen is buttery-smooth and opening apps is very fast.

Battery on the 6S Plus is average. Screen on time isn’t stellar but standby time is excellent. I can make it through a whole work day on the iPhone with a lots of juice to spare since I barely use my cellphone when I’m on the job. Weekends, pre-pandemic, it barely held up with being out and about. Now with seemingly endless community quarantine in the country due to COVID, the iPhone can get me through my days off with a bit of charge left by Monday. It is still at 89% battery health.

Wrapping Up

In case it wasn’t apparent enough, I really liked the iPhone 6S Plus. So much so that I now use an iPhone XR as my daily-driver. I might explain why I went with the two-year-old XR in a future blog post, but the short of it is this: it’s good and it’s relatively inexpensive.

I still keep around an Android phone to this day, mind you, but I don’t customize the hell out of it as much as I used to. As my needs evolved over time I found myself not really needing or even wanting to tinker as much. Now a phone that just works pretty much suffices.

That statement pretty much describes my journey with the iPhone: it worked therefore it sufficed. I very much expect to say the same of the XR three years from now.

I am currently writing a follow up detailing my experiences with iOS and the broader Apple ecosystem. Stay tuned.