A week on iPhone 12 Pro Max

Let me tell you what to expect from the newly released iPhone 12 Pro Max smartphone manufactured by Apple, based on my using the device for a week. Although I have an older version of iPhone, for the most part, for the past five or so years my smartphone staple was Samsung, Samsung Galaxy Note, to be exact. I really didn’t want to switch from Samsung to iPhone because I feel, and I believe it is true, that Android-based phones like the Samsung products are more advanced, particularly for the power user. Advanced in terms of configuring the phone to do telco stuff like networking or deploying it as a surrogate for a desktop. The iPhone felt like a toy for the most part. It was easy to use, but in those days cell phones offered few functionalities. I dabbled into the HTC products, which ran Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system, before switching to Galaxy Note, which is driven by Android. This memory of iPhone stayed with me for years. Moreover, Android products later incorporated some of the jazzy stuff that iPhone is known for. But Apple seems to be the master of jazziness.

Why did I switch to iPhone? My family. Everyone in my immediate family – wife and my three daughters – uses an iPhone. Perhaps more compelling is Face Time. Because I did not have an iPhone I could not Face Time my daughters and the grandchildren on demand. This is was a problem that I had to resolve. To cut the long story short, I logged into my account with my phone carrier, AT & T, evening of Sunday, 22 November 2020, and asked to have iPhone 12 Pro Max shipped to me. The bill for my choice of 512 GB disk storage model is $1,399, although I didn’t have to pay cash down to have the phone shipped to me. The cost would be added to my monthly bills with my carrier. To my pleasant surprise, FedEx shipment arrived the day after I placed the order; that is Monday 23 November 2020.  The following day I visited the local office of my carrier to have my service switched from Galaxy Note to iPhone 12 Pro Max.

The process went very fast. It turns out that the sim card on the iPhone had been customized for me when I placed the order, so that no new card needed to be installed at the local office. My mobile account was finally switched. Then I needed to transfer my data (contacts, photos, miscellaneous data, etc.) to my new phone. The attendant gave me the directions to do this, which include downloading a “data transfer” app developed by my carrier, and ensuring that my old phone (Galaxy Note) and new phone (iPhone) were connected to the same network, which, in my house, is the 5G network. The Galaxy would give a QR code, which would read by the iPhone to get them connected so that data could flow between them. This process is quite simple, except that getting iPhone to read the QR code was less intuitive than one would have expected. I needed to place the back face of the iPhone on the front face of the Galaxy to read the QR code onto a square on the iPhone. This was the only hitch in the process.

The first observation I made was during unpacking. That is, the packaging is a bit more modest than those from Apple in the past. Apple talks up the unpack event of its smartphones, with an unwritten reference to the superior high quality of the package. So, I was a bit underwhelmed. Another observation I made is that the pin code to the iPhone had changed from four digits that I used on my old iPhone and my current iPad, to 6 digits, for stronger security. Also, two-level authentication is now enforced, although sometimes it feels like the authentication levels are three: the pin code, my phone number, and my apple ID credentials. I have not setup the phone to use my face to login into the device. (This feature is embedded in FACE ID.)

With my iPad synched to my iPhone, the two interoperated seamlessly. It was magical that I could access downloaded iTunes music located in my iPad on the iPhone via streaming. The speed of the iPhone is phenomenal, compared to anything I have used recently. For example, you can never enter your pass codes too fast – the device will process it. Well, iPhone Pro Max is advertised as 5G, although most of the time, 4G LTE shows up in the display. The design of the phone is well thought out, and app icons stay where they are placed, unlike in my Galaxy Note. The App library groups the apps according to type, which I like. Accessing stuff on the iPhone is infinitely easier than on Android devices because of the apparently superior design.

Not minding the slightly inferior battery life of iPhone when compared to that of competing devices, I am afraid that the ease of use of iPhone could get me hooked for a long time. With so many features and apps, the dearth of geek tech in iPhone is not as obvious anymore.