Contrary to popular belief, women can be as much into tech as men. Well, as much as those men that are into tech. My husband is not one of them. Internet, wi-fi, scanning, printing problems in my house? I’m the geek that can and does solve them.
I love electronic gadgets and I’m an early adopter. Of course, I love Apple, and I’ve been waiting for the iPhone 6 for years, without exaggeration. I still have an iPhone 4S. The 5S is the only Apple phone I didn’t adopt early, or ever.
So, I was excited with the launch of iPhone 6, with some reservations, as you can read in my previous post: iPhone 6: Yes! Yes! Yes?. But I wrote that post before actually holding either iPhone 6 version in my hands.
Early this week, but much later than I had planned (because I have a life and a blog), I finally got my hands on them at an Apple store. Before arriving at the store, I was pretty convinced that I was going to prefer the iPhone 6 Plus. If I’ve learned anything in my life is that, with the exception of a few things, bigger is always better. Bigger screen, longer battery life, better camera, and sharper image, all these specs were pushing me towards the Plus.
Yet, I had a doubt. I have small hands** (although I’ve been told that I have fingers made to play the piano, which I unfortunately don’t). Could the iPhone 6 Plus be one of the exceptions to my “bigger is better” rule? Not a single tech post I read (and I read many) showed a photo or video with a woman holding the new iPhones, neither did Apple.com. By the way, I think that’s not only sexist, but bad marketing. Women are at least 50% responsible for household purchases (including cars), and some reports put that number at over 80%. But, I won’t go there now.
At the store, I purposefully alternated between the two sizes. I would write a message on the iPhone 6, then I would do the same on the iPhone 6 Plus. I would use vertical orientation when writing, then switch to horizontal, each time on both phones.
Now, before I continue, you should also know that perhaps there is only one opinion that I hold more strongly than the “bigger is better” rule and that is: Why use two hands when you can use one?
I became attached to the one-hand rule when I had my first son. Like most mothers, I spent most of his first years not only making sure that he was well-cared for, but also that he wouldn’t get badly hurt or die. No matter what I was doing, I needed to have a free hand. Picking up his pacifier, holding his hand as he learned to walk, grabbing him just in time before he ran after a ball across the street.
I started my love affair with totes at that time too. I needed big bags that I could hang from one shoulder, open with one hand, and see all its contents without having to put it down to rummage through it with two hands, and if they had an outside pocket for a phone, even better. It meant that I could just slip my hand in and easily grab it. But, even after years of practicing and loving the one-hand rule, I was ready to let it go if the Plus was too great to pass up. I really wanted that bigger screen.
However, I can now say without a shadow of a doubt that the Plus is not for me. I found that when I typed on it in landscape mode, my thumbs really had to stretch out too much to reach the letters in the center of the keyboard. What’s more, the edges of the phone were tightly pushing against my hands (the area between the index finger and thumb).
Besides this, both phones are luxuriously smooth but that makes them slippery. I like to use my phone naked (not me, I mean the phone without a case). The iPhone 6 Plus felt too big and slippery in my hands, and if I forced myself to use a case, I would be adding a bit of size to it, making it even more uncomfortable to type in landscape mode.
Bottom line: If you have small hands, the iPhone 6 Plus is not for you. If you’re concerned about image quality, I didn’t notice any difference between the two phones. The iPhone 6 is already bigger than the iPhones: 4, 4S and 5S which means that I get to have the best of both worlds, a bigger size and one-hand use.
I guess I could say that this makes the iPhone 6 the Apple of my eye hand.
**Note: I thought that it would be useful to define small for you. My hand measures almost 7 inches from the beginning of the palm to the tip of the middle finger and 4.5 inches from beginning of palm to the tip of the thumb.
In searching for an image for this post, I finally found a couple with women’s hands holding the iPhone. One of them is on this post.
Update: After using my iPhone6 for one year, I bought an iPhone 6s Plus in December 2015. I’m loving it. But, too often, I’m finding it too small!
