What it’s like to switch from an iPhone 6 to an iPhone 11

A great number of people have been happily using the iPhone 6 for many years, but like blue jeans that eventually get holes in the crotch — you need to replace ’em before you end up naked in the streets. Myself and several members of my family switched from the iPhone 6 to the iPhone 11, and I wanted to share our experiences. You’ll find out what’s painful and pleasant in this big transition, and pick up a couple of helpful tips…

Which new iPhone should you get?

If you’ve been using an iPhone with a home button, you may be hesitant to give it up. My advice is to cut ties with the past and to give the home-buttonless iPhone 11 a try. There’s a little bit of a learning curve involved, but I personally think it’s worth it. If you end up wanting to go back to an iPhone model that has a home button (my recommendation is the 2020 iPhone SE), Apple gives you a 14-day period to return your iPhone 11.

Choosing which phones to get was fairly obvious for my family. We take lots of photos and videos of our young children, so the greatly improved cameras on the new iPhone 11 made older iPhone options much less appealing. The entry-level 64GB versions didn’t have enough storage for our needs, so we only considered iPhone 11 models with more capacity, namely the 128GB model.

My wife and I both prefer smaller phones, but this ended up being an area where we needed to compromise. Ideally, we both would have gotten an iPhone 11 Pro, because it’s the smallest and most lightweight option. But the larger storage capacity version of this phone costs $400 more than the regular non-pro iPhone 11 with 128GB of storage. Smaller and lighter is nice, but definitely not that nice.

Unfortunately, the compact, lightweight and all-around excellent 2020 iPhone SE didn’t exist as an option when we were choosing our phones. I wouldn’t have gotten it for myself, but my wife likely would have chosen that model.

We quickly figured out which phone was the best choice for us, but we were uncertain as to which color to buy. This required a dreaded trip to the local Apple store. 🙀

Note: We never considered switching to Android. I did that once back in 2013 and it didn’t go well.

The buying experience

In late September of 2019, Apple announced the new iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro smartphones. My wife and I had been hanging on to our old iPhones for many years. She had an iPhone 6, and I had the 6S. Both of our old phones were still operating, but it was clear that they were both going to need to be replaced soon. So, instead of waiting for a dead-phone catastrophe to strike, I preemptively bought two new iPhone 11’s.

The biggest bummer of the new iPhone 11 is the size and weight. It’s too large and too heavy. But, buying an Apple product is like going to a restaurant that only serves Chicken Kiev. You go in, you sit down, and the waiter brings Chicken Kiev to your table. That’s what’s on the “menu.” That’s what you get.

The screen… It big.

The advantage of being somewhat forced to buy such a large phone is that the screen is much bigger. Do you notice it? Sort of. A little. Well, not that much. You get used to the size very quickly. The only way to confirm that you appreciate the bigger screen is to pick up your old phone and use it for a few minutes. Then you see how oddly small and cramped the screen feels. So yeah, bigger screen = good.

Cool laser beams that scan your face

The iPhone 11 has this new thing on it called Face ID. It’s a bunch of sensors and things that quickly scan your face in order to unlock the phone, and to do things like verify that it’s you when you purchase something from the App Store. I think it’s interesting and useful, but it’s not for everyone.

My wife immediately made me deactivate the Face ID features from her iPhone 11. She didn’t want a creepy, futuristic space-phone to have a map of her facial topography. This is understandable.

Bra, the cameras rock

One thing that’s very different on the iPhone 11 compared to the old iPhone 6 and 6S is that the cameras are super awesome now. The wide angle lens is great for certain kinds of shots, the “Portrait Mode” setting is fun to play with and can snap some impressive looking photos with astonishing speed and ease. There are lots of other effects that are just plain silly (see below), but all-in-all the cameras are a major reason to upgrade to this phone.

Does anything kind of suck?

Overall, there is an inherent lameness to the iPhone 11. It was a huge upgrade for my wife and I, yet, it didn’t feel that way. The compromises we were forced to make took away much of the positivity of the experience. I mean, I love headphone jacks, and these phones do not have them. Call it this, call it that, but in the end it’s only one thing: it’s a shitty user experience. Period.

Another major problem with the iPhone 11 is the shortcomings of the software it runs. iOS is just plain buggy these days. It was notoriously bad when these phones were launched in September of 2019, and it’s still pretty shaky today. The best example of this is Apple’s stock Notes app. It constantly manages to scramble or completely lose the notes I make in it. It’s very frustrating.

Want to see this in action? Try using copy and paste in the Notes app on an iPhone running iOS 13. Every time I do this, it is able to copy text, but when I paste it elsewhere in the note, the buggy software adds a space above and below the text that gets pasted. This “bug” has lived a long and happy life for over six months now. Apple apparently doesn’t care enough to fix it.

Should you get an iPhone 11?

Of course you should. Look, there are drawbacks, but whatever. You need an iPhone. Get it. Donezo.