Getting New Apple Iphone

I have a 12 mini. It's my first Apple product ever. I like it good enough, but it doesn't really do anything that my other cell phones did not do...at least, not that I'm aware of.

I went with Apple this time because I wanted an Apple Watch, and you need a iPhone to set it up and manage it. And Apple is buying market share, so gave me a generous trade-in on my old Droid. I think that without trade-in, the Mini is $700 from Verizon. Others might have a lower price, but the comparisons are never apples-to-apples.

I've not updated phones on a routine basis (I'm 67 years old and this is my 3rd phone ever), but if Apple is not updating the O/S, it might make sense to upgrade for security purposes. I had not thought of that aspect. I'm not gonna be happy if their lack of support is supposed to make me buy products from them more often.

 

I have an 11+ that I have had for over a year, and I really like it. If you have not used Face ID, then it takes a little bit to set that up and get used to it; but then you will just LOVE having it !
You can set up more than one profile, so if you sometimes wear glasses and sometimes not (or something similar) it can recognize you either way.

The camera is much better than the old one in an iPhone 6, and has a whole lot more capabilities. My daughter has the iPhone 12+ and it does even more things, and has more memory than mine does, but she updates her phone ever year or two anyway.

Edit to add: it is not Apple who is not updating the iPhone 6, but since the carriers are upgrading to 5G, many of them no longer support the older phones, of any model.

It is possible that your phone software will not take the latest updates, @Cody Fousnaugh ; but my ex (who recently passed away) had the 6+, and his phone was up to the current iOS. Have you tried to update past the 12.5.4 iOS update ?

 

I forgot to mention: I have a credit on my plane for the 5G access charges. We ain't got 5g here yet. We were among the last regions to get 4g when they rolled it out. So I can't comment on any performance difference.

I believe (but am not certain) that the support that's being dropped by the carriers is for the old flip phones that are on 3g technology. 3g has been dropped to free up capacity for 5g. There certainly may be more to it that this. But if the iPhone 6 is not getting any more O/S upgrades, it's Apple that has dropped support (just as Microsoft stops issuing security updates for older versions of Windows.) The only thing the carrier would impact is the ability to connect on a discontinued band (3g.)

 

This article says you may get a better deal by waiting until September, when Apple historically releases their new products.

 

Very excellent point, @John Brunner ! I remember seeing that not only Apple itself marked down older models; but places like Best Buy and even Amazon were also lowering their prices by a whole lot, to clear the inventory.
Along with the new models, I think that we also get the iOS 15 coming sometime this fall. Unless Cody needs the phones right away, they can probably get a much better deal by waiting until the new models come out this fall.
I love watching the new Apple presentation each fall, and just seeing what the new advances are, even though I have no intentions of upgrading what I have right now.

 

You're talking about being plugged into Apple's universe made me go look at the GMail account that was set up for my Apple ID. Gee, I got [Apple] mail!!! I just set it up to forward to my Yahoo account.

I may have mentioned that when I bought my 12 mini, Apple gave me $350 trade in on it. Not bad for an old phone that only cost $200.

Regarding Cody waiting: I wonder if Apple has stopped upgrading his O/S already, or if he's concerned about it happening in the near future.

 

Even if the iOS is no longer upgrading, the phone will still work okay as long as their cell provider is still providing coverage for their plan.
We have a very old iPad Mini 2, which is from something like 2014, and it still works fine for what Bobby uses it for, it just wont use any of the new apps that have to have the newer operating systems.
Bobby uses it mostly to take out into the shop and play music with, and it works fine for things like that.

 

As an aside, I recently read that a good security thing to do is to reboot your cell phone at least monthly. Apparently the stuff that hackers install are not permanent programs...they only reside in memory until the next time the phones are restarted and memory is cleared out. Then you're clean.

 

That sounds like me. I used to build my own desktop computers, and would always install the prior operating system and processor technology just for that reason (and for cost.)

-Those who must have the latest & greatest are said to be on The Bleeding Edge.
--Bleeding Edgers drag us into the future.
-Those like you & me are the Late Adopters.
--Late Adopters help developers squeeze every last dime out of their products.

As an aside, being new to Apple, I had no idea that the 12 was already fleshed-out technology. That explains why they marked them down so much (50%) but pretended is was under a generous trade-in program.