It's always scary for me to switch to a new iPhone.
I think I've got post-traumatic Windows disorder, given my memories of encountering the "blue screen of death" when I tried to install a new version of that operating system during a time of my life I'm now ashamed of -- a few years when I stopped using an Apple computer because I (wrongly) thought it would be better to be part of the much wider Windows world than the much smaller Cult of Apple.
Actually, almost always the changeover to a new iPhone has gone glitch-free for me.
But I readily confess that when my iPhone 8 plus arrived yesterday, I was a bit nervous about firing it up and transferring my settings and many apps from the iPhone 6s that has worked well for me over the past few years.
I was curious to see how the beginning of the set-up process looked, though, so last night I took a look at the initial welcome screens of the iPhone 8 plus.
What I saw there intrigued me.
I could either do a manual set-up, or, if both my old and new phone were running iOS 11, I could just lay them side by side and somehow they'd magically talk to each other. Since this seemed way cool, I downloaded iOS 11 onto my iPhone 6s, even though I knew that I'd be selling it via Gazelle in just a few days.
Good decision.
Because today I did the side-by-side thing and the process worked great. Well, with just one glitch. After about 20 minutes of the two iPhones talking to each other, the initial transfer screen still was showing the same whirring icon that indicates something is going on.
But I'd seen a You Tube video of the iPhone 8 plus "side by side" set-up that showed the data transfer happening almost instantly. And the video narrator said that after the initial set-up, apps on the old phone still needed to be downloaded.
So I got worried about the length of time the initial side-by-side transfer was taking, given that apps apparently weren't involved. I decided to turn on the iPhone 8 plus, whose screen had gone dark, and see what was happening with it. Fortunately, I was met with some additional set-up choices, even though I'd never gotten an indication that it was time to do this.
And the icons for all my purchased apps were showing up on the iPhone 8 plus.
Given our slow broadband speed, it took several hours for all of them to be downloaded from the App Store. But every one of them was transferred to my new phone automatically, an improvement from the iPhone 6s set-up, where I had to fuss around with several balky apps that never got past the "waiting" stage.
So far, I'm enjoying the iPhone 8 plus. I like the larger screen. I haven't delved into all the new bells and whistles on the 8 plus with iOs 11 yet. But I took some photos on a late afternoon dog walk here in rural south Salem, Oregon to see how the camera worked.
Here's some results.
I always enjoy the setting sun illuminating trees on the crest of a hill on the path behind our house that leads to Spring Lake. The new iPhone did a good job capturing the light and dark.
Our dog, ZuZu (top right), met up with three dogs belonging to a neighbor. Good to know the iPhone 8 plus camera takes good pictures of canines, or I'd have to return it.
Daring a selfie, I was disappointed to find that the 8 plus camera doesn't make me look any younger. But maybe there's an app for that.
Oak tree silhouetted against the setting sun. Nice.
The most impressive thing about the iPhone 8 plus camera I've discovered so far is the digital zoom. This photo was taken on the earthen Spring Lake dam, looking toward the dock that serves our community lake -- which is barely noticeable in the middle of the photo on the far shore.
Zooming in to the maximum 10x, this was the result. The 8 plus has image stabilization, obviously, because there's no way my hands could have held the camera steady enough to get this sharp of a 10x photo. So that's a big plus for the iPhone 8 plus.
All in all, then, I'm happy that I made the switch from my iPhone 6s to the 8 plus. As noted in a previous post, I wasn't pleased with my first try at the buying process, which demanded an Equifax credit check. But after paying cash for the phone, I'm confident that the 8 plus and me are going to have a good time together.
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