Matthew Panzarino on the iPhones 6S

I’m still working my way through all the reviews of the new iPhones this week, but my favorite so far is Matthew Panzarino’s for TechCrunch. It’s a good complement to mine, too — he goes way deeper on the camera improvements and Live Photos than I did, and he was primarily using the Plus, not the regular 6S.

At the start, Panzarino writes:

By the way, given that the vast majority of folks will restore their phones from an iCloud backup, I ditched the whole “let’s pretend this is a new iPhone” testing methodology. I think it’s silly to test phones in a vacuum. So I loaded up my iCloud backup with all of my normal apps — nothing too crazy, not a lot of beta software, just a healthy mix of productivity, games, sports apps and the tools I need to run TechCrunch like Slack, Convo, Notefile, email accounts and messaging clients.

By “cloning” my current iPhone, I’m able to see how they both perform on an equal real-world footing, not as lab test dummies. It’s not the only method, but it’s the only one that makes sense to me.

I’ve been doing this for years. I treat my review units like I would if they were my own new iPhone, and with my new iPhones, I always restore them from a backup of my previous iPhone. Otherwise it’s too big a hassle restoring everything I need to feel at home — and in my experience, there’s no downside.

Starting with the 5S/5C two years ago, though, Apple has provided reviewers with two new phones. Last year and this year we got one in each size. What I’ve done with these is pick one to use thoroughly, as my “real” everyday iPhone. The other — the 5C in 2013, and the Plus models last year and this year — I do set up as a “new phone”, just so I can see what the defaults are like.

Anyway, for all of you expecting new iPhones to arrive tomorrow, I wouldn’t hesitate to set them as clones of your old iPhone.

★ Thursday, 24 September 2015