I dropped my 2-week old iPhone 8 last week. As I rushed to pick it up, the panic set in, and then I saw it: a crack on the back. It was my first iPhone to crack.
I got my first iPhone for my 18th birthday — the iPhone 5. And less than six months in, it started acting up. The screen would move on its own, phone calls picked up without me noticing and messages typed themselves without me ever touching the screen. My phone was possessed.
My second model, the iPhone 6, was okay for the first year and a half. But one fine day the touch screen stopped working — out of the blue. I found a “cool” trick that if I pressed the two corners of the screen really hard, it would magically revive. Turns out it was a glitch in the phone itself, and I was not to blame for any of the issues.
Replacing iPhones has cost me a significant amount of money, but I choose to keep on doing it.
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Why do I keep on insisting?
Because it’s the iPhone.
I haven’t owned an Android phone before, but not because I think they’re inferior, or have any negative aspects. Apple has simply won me over. I bought a MacBook shortly after getting my first iPhone and there is no way that I can imagine having a different operating system now.
iMessage and FaceTime (FT) are the real winners. I use FT on a regular basis to communicate with my friends who live abroad and there’s nothing easier than being able to pick up on your phone and migrate to your laptop if your battery runs out, or vice versa.
I’m not saying that I couldn’t adapt to a new OS, Android or even Windows, but the truth is I will keep on picking iOS. The simplicity and clean design keeps me comfortable.
Using iCloud to store my photos is another big factor. Last year I tried to use Google Photos in the hope I wouldn’t have to pay for storage, but it felt foreign to my phone. It was a lot easier to have access to my photos from native apps on both my phone and laptop. It felt right.
And I’m not the only one. According to Fortune, “There are now more than 700 million iPhones currently in use worldwide,” many of these own second hand phones. The iPhone hasn’t lost its magic touch just yet. In Argentina, where I live, you couldn’t buy iPhones until earlier this year at the most expensive price in the world — but I can still sell my old iPhone 6 for the price I paid for it two years ago.
Apple has created an army of loyal customers. As published on CNCB, Morgan Stanley stated, “According to our April 2017 AlphaWise US Smartphone survey, Ninety-two percent of US iPhone users who plan to upgrade their phone in the next year plan to repurchase an iPhone, up from 86% the year before.”
So even though I cried when my precious golden glass broke, I have no doubt I’m going to get it fixed. And as much as this bothers me, I would still purchase the next iPhone even if it has a glass back. Because it’s the iPhone.
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