It’s now been raining for seven days in a row and you see what I’ve been reduced to – taking pictures of iPhones!
Anyway the sad tale of my poor old iPhone 3GS has now come to an end. My wife and myself both got one of these phones back in 2009 when they first came out.
The one on the left was mine. One day I was sitting outside my wife’s fitness club with our old dog, Jackson browsing away on the phone. Something he saw caused him to rush off, pulling my arm with him. The phone flew out, spiralled up into the air and came down with a crash on the concrete paving (he also destroyed two Amazon Kindle’s in the same way before I figured out that it wasn’t a good idea to hold his leash in the same hand as an electronic device). As you see the screen shattered. But it was still working and I could still read the screen – just. So I kept using it.
The one in the middle belonged to my wife. Eventually she got an iPhone 5s. I was getting frustrated with my 3GS – not so much because the screen was broken. I could live with that. But because 1) the battery life was gradually decreasing; and 2) newer versions of apps wouldn’t work on the old operating system (OS3). The latter was particularly important as I read a lot and had come to depend on the Amazon Kindle app, which I had unfortunately accidentally deleted and could no longer replace. Then one day I had a brainwave – how about I use my wife’s old phone. I thought at the time that it was an iPhone 4 (it wasn’t) and so it would be a slight step up. I upgraded the OS to version 6, which I figured would support the Kindle app (it did) and all was well with the world – for a while. I had a phone that didn’t have a broken screen and could run my favored apps. OK, it was a bit slow but it got the job done. Then one day – disaster! While it continued to make and receive calls, the person I was calling couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t hear them. Ah well back to the cracked screen.
Anyway the other day the phone with the cracked screen stopped working altogether. It was probably my fault. I was taking a bath and put the phone on the side of the bath in case my wife called. When I got out of the bath the phone was wet – I must have splashed some water on it. All would probably have been well with an intact phone, but with all those cracks and holes….I switched back to phone number two and lo and behold it worked. I could hear people speaking and they could hear me. Somehow it had miraculously come back to life. But I no longer trusted it. It had stopped working once so it could stop working again. I’d put up with the laughter and sarcasm from my friends for too long. It was time to upgrade.
My wife had been talking about upgrading for a while (she wanted a better camera and a bigger screen). She got an iPhone 6s and I inherited her two year old 5s. So I have a fairly recent iPhone. The screen isn’t cracked and it will run all my apps. It’s not the latest technology, but it’s good enough for me.
Since this is primarily a photo blog, you may well ask what all of this has to do with photography. I love cameras and would never dismiss the camera in the iPhone. It’s revolutionized photography. I imagine more people take pictures today with phone cameras than with regular cameras. You always have it with you and within its limitations it can produce great results. I few years ago we were in the Turks and Caicos Islands. My wife went for a spa treatment and took a few pictures inside with her iPhone 3GS. I took some pictures outside with my regular camera. That day the light was gorgeous. I later did a photobook and you really can’t tell the difference. I’ve asked friends if they can identify the pictures taken with the iPhone and they can’t. I recently did another photobook with just iPhone pictures (because I didn’t have another camera with me) as a souvenir for a friend who may be relocating. It came out fine. I’m pleased that the iPhone 5s has a better camera than the 3GS I had before.
Hopefully I won’t have to worry about upgrading for another seven years.