Increasingly Familiar Apple Lust Objects for 2016 and onwards

it didn't work for me. it stalled out. I was never able to re-summon the swirly magic circle. So I had to restore from a backup. Which felt like it took way too long. Otherwise fine.

Yep I've got a cloth (!!?) case and a jack winging their way towards me as I speak.

I hesitate to mention the camera on to you Mike because I know what I great photographer you are but the camera is absolutely outstanding compared to my old SE.

It is big enough that I am needing to relearn things - particularly the back button which as mentioned I can only just stretch to now. But I'm sure in a few days I won't even remember that I did it any other way.

It definitely feels more 'different' - more luxurious - than my SE felt from my 5S.

My 13yo recently told me that "big cameras are a boomer cliché" so, who knows, I may actually be back in her good books if I start taking more phone snaps.

Still weighing up the numbers before taking the plunge; can't really spring for an extra £17/month over my current SE + SIM-only arrangement, so I'm hoping to find a decent deal. The routine every couple of years has been to "live chat" the folks on the EE website and wangle myself something better than they're advertising. Not surprisingly, that's not an option at the moment. Either hoping for SE-2020 on a contract for only a bit more than I'm currently paying, or change the SIM-only deal to something even cheaper, and buy the handset from Apple.

Of course, the original SE has been *just fine* these last few weeks. Barely going anywhere, not searching for 4G signals or streaming audio, the battery lasts all day... It doesn't really need replacing.

Don’t replace it then - don’t allow yourself to be manipulated into an unnecessary purchase. When the time comes that you *do* need to replace it, your options will be better and/or cheaper.

My old SE was fine but my son had smashed his phone's screen (my old 5S) and no way was I going to spring for a screen replacement for a phone that old and knackered. So the SE went to him, and I get the new one. Hakuna matata.

I just love capitalism

Yeah, the next-generation pressure isn't from wanting the latest thing, it's literally from the next generation :) Kids now both have 5S handsets from 2014-15, which do have a tendency to spontaneously shut down, so naturally they're clamouring for my next cast-off. Can't please both of 'em, though - their Mum switched to a cheap Android last year so there's nothing else in the hand-me-down pipeline.

Yeah been there - actually I bought used SEs for both my daughters and both are going strong after a year and a half.

This is a bit shit of them:

Fwiw. this is not a bug. It's not an ideal situation for me (I use notification actions dozens of times a day every day). Haptic works in many other ways on iPhone SE, but not on notifications. https://t.co/2SqFKKGlZG

— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) April 27, 2020

young angry dude in my house went into a rage and headbutted his ipad air when it froze and it seems to be bricked now. I'm hoping it is just the connection between the screen and the CPU that has come out, which has happened before when he has done this. Does anyone know of a UK based postal repair service that is reputable and will repair at a reasonable price. I know, probably not much of a chance but no harm in asking.

I looked up how to repair this fault on youtube but am too heavy handed and clumsily fat fingered to try it myself.

i've had good experiences with iSmash. they do a mail-order service now and the page for iPads is here:

https://www.ismash.com/pages/ipad-repairs

thank you tracer, much appreciated

I just found someone who literally lives 10 minutes from my house who is continuing his town centre ipad repair business from home. Will see how this goes - he get's good reviews.

amazing!

this morning i woke up to a dead iPhone.

i’d forgotten to charge it!

what freaked me out though was that the home button didn’t “click” at all! it was like the whole phone was just a solid immobile slab. the button doesn’t click?? what flavour of badness is this?? once i got a charge it started clicking again though. extremely strange. how can a physical button become deactivated?

it's not a button iirc. it's just a haptic motor

yeah, it doesn't actually move it just fools you into thinking it's moving with haptic feedback. it's really eerie the first time you feel it "dead"

what?????? i’m clicking it right now and i would swear on my copy of “shades of jae” that it’s moving

well it's vibin

The 6 and 7 series were so thin, it was great. My 11 feels twice as thick

aw man stet just redpilled tracer!!!!

in modern parlance, i’m screaming

Yeah, the non-button button is pretty freaky. You get to choose your flavour of haptic feedback when you first set up the phone but I'm not sure I could tell the difference between the modes. My SE-2020 is somehow more convincingly clickable than Carolina's 7. The feel of moving a graduated dial (with a little "hump" at the zero point) when you edit photo attributes is nice too.

Camera is pretty ace. I think my IG feed is finally going to become truly "insta", instead of being proper-camera shots I transfer over hours or days after the fact.

I got my head around the fake button travel OK but then I started really freaking out when I thought for a while it was tricking me into imagining a click noise. Then I found out that it really does emit a click noise and I learned to have a little more faith in my own senses.

I find myself *mashing* the 7 / 8 home button. Muscle memory expecting the concurrent depress still there

And any button or facsimile is superior to swiping up

it’s weird going back to the old mechanical home button (e.g. the current ipad air) because the negligible sideways travel makes me think it’s broken. every time.

Has anyone got the new SE? Wondering whether to just replace my current SE with a renewed old model – as the camera is broken and I have an eight-month old daughter to take 12,000 pictures of every day - or go with the 2020 version. If anyone’s got one, what’s the camera like? Sufficiently better than the previous SE? I don’t use my phone for much else.

yeah, the camera is top notch

It's really very good. You'll get a lot of mileage out of Portrait mode with a kid around! If it senses a face, it applies a graduated blur to everything not in the same plane as the face; you can mess with this after the fact too - simulating deeper or shallower depth of field, studio-style lighting, etc. (Or turn it off). The Smart HDR of non-portrait mode is impressive too. These are two things (fake bokeh, HDR) which I'd always thought were cheap and nasty effects on phone-cams, but they've really improved. The back-camera itself is slightly better specced on the new model, and the front-camera is much better than the old SE.

Pretty happy with this. Get a grippy case though. Thing will slide off any surface.

yeah - really a vast difference w the camera

i got a nice 'tweed' case for it - actual cloth which i guess is glued to a form-fitting piece of plastic - and it's v nice so far

Cool. Ordered one. Thanks! Yay consumerism

Good to know about the camera!

Also (and I hope this isn't a dealbreaker, as you've just ordered it), there's no headphone jack, and no Lightning-minijack adaptor in the box. They do bundle in some Apple EarPods with Lightning connection, obv. They're better than I remember, but I did have to buy an adaptor (£9) to carry on using my third-party earbuds. And, for some strange reason, the adaptor only worked one way round initially. Ok now.

Wireless charging is nice too. I have a Qi pad on my bedside table (bought when the kids wrecked the USB port on my tablet), so I just lay it on that.

Ah earplugs thing is no bother, I have tinnitus and never listen to headphones anyway!

can someone recommend a wireless charging pad that takes advantage of the SE's fast charging?

do you want one that charges well at a reasonable price, or do you want to peacock it

I've got one of the Samsung Fast Charge wireless stands that holds the phone at an angle on my work desk so I can poke at the phone while it's charging

I've got the insanely overpriced Nomad charger that looks luxe on my nightstand, but it has two charging spots, a couple discreet extra usb ports on the back, and they have a model with a stand for the watch if you have one

i think fast charging is a wired-only proposition? could be wrong here tho...

yeah, it's not the "fast charge" standard, it's just uh... a charging pad that has higher than the lowest amount of charge for a charging stand

and yes, no charging pad will do actual fast charging

just plug it into a good charger that supports it, or if it supports even faster charging, get a usb-c charger and a lightning-to-usb-c cable

and get a good cable, too. I got a seemingly-OK Amazon lightning-to-C cable and it sucks: lots of "not supported" errors and charging failures.

buy Anker stuff as default imo

fs thought this was a simple question

go to thewirecutter.com and buy whatever charger they say

Fast charging requires a USB-C power adapter that offers at least 18 watts.

got it

thewirecutter lads are a bunch of yankee scoundrels who always cite model names that don't exist in the world's greatest country, blighty britain

yeah, I was going to add a caveat about that but then was like, eh who cares :)

If I'm really bored one day I might see how quickly the Qi pad charges vs regular Lightning cable vs the 12W iPad charger (which, seeing as it's <18W, may do nothing different). Can't really see fast charging being a major need tbh. Esp atm.

I just want fast charging because I often forget to even charge my phone - so when I do remember, it would be nice to give it the max amount of juice possible...

This is where I admit I’ve been abusing the fact usb-c lets devices tell the charger the maximum they’re allowed to charge at

so I‘be been using the ridiculous Macbook Pro charger that’s like 96W or something for everything from my Nintendo Switch to my phone to my laptop