Iphone 15

[mpeirce]

I see that AppleCare+ is around $100/year. So for a 5 year phone cycle that is going to be kind of expensive, no?

DW and I are on the Apple Upgrade Program. A little BTD, but also I promised myself over 10 years ago that I wouldn't stop working until I could afford to buy what I wanted.

Anyway, the AUP includes AppleCare+. Shiny new phone every year. Basically you pay for ½ the cost of a new iPhone and get a new one each year - with AppleCare+. Makes it easy and the only thing I have to think about is what color...

 

[Ronstar]

Playing with the camera. Portrait mode - not bad.

 

[Lsbcal]

DW and I are on the Apple Upgrade Program. A little BTD, but also I promised myself over 10 years ago that I wouldn't stop working until I could afford to buy what I wanted.

Anyway, the AUP includes AppleCare+. Shiny new phone every year. Basically you pay for ½ the cost of a new iPhone and get a new one each year - with AppleCare+. Makes it easy and the only thing I have to think about is what color...

Sounds like a good idea. And I could easily afford it. But what would stop me (besides being a cheapskate) is having to bother with getting the transfer right and having to bother with getting used to a new one. Plus I'd have to decide on the color each year ...

I think going 5 years was a bit too long for me, and so for an upgrade cycle (from my current XR) maybe 3 years is better. My battery was not up to continuous use in Europe and I had to set it on low power mode at the beginning of a day. Most of that was due to navigating in big cities.

 

[explanade]

Just ordered a silicone case with MagSafe for mine from Apple. Should be here in 4 days. Hope I don't drop it in the next few days.

I ordered a case under $10 from Amazon, made sure it was MagSafe compatible.

It works but the magnet isn't as strong as another case I had previously. I guess different cases use different magnets or something.

I also have a MagSafe wallet but again it doesn't attach to the back of this case as well as a clear plastic case that I had for my iPhone 14 Pro Max.

So I guess I'll look around for other cheap MagSafe cases to come out for the 15 Pro Max but I don't use MagSafe to charge. I do have a battery bank with MagSafe but I think it's way more efficient to charge wired.

There are some cool accessories like car mounts which use MagSafe but I don't think they would attach strongly enough with this case.

 

[explanade]

I drop my phone too often to not use a case, but I wish I didn't have to.

I remember once seeing an interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson where he said he never used one. His reasoning is that it's much nicer looking (and feeling) out of a case, and since it's so expensive he simply got in the habit of being extra careful when taking it out of his pocket. That works for him.

I've been good with not dropping the phone but I did have my iPad drop off a makeshift night table I set up at a vacation apartment and cracking the screen.

I've always had iPhone in a case. If nothing else, when I trade in, I don't want to lose value with cracked screen or dents or scratches.

Also as I take more pictures there's been some very windy conditions so I attack a wrist strap to the case. Difficult to hold the phone steady when taking a picture but sometimes I'm holding the phone over a ledge to take pictures.

 

[tulak]

Picked up my iPhone 15 Pro today. It was a bit of a process, but I ended up getting it at an Apple Store, transferring everything to the new phone, and traded in my old iPhone.

I bought a cheap silicon case on Amazon. It’ll work until I get a nicer case. I looked at the FineWoven cases and wasn’t impressed. Funny that most of them were all scratched-up. It looks like people were trying to see if the new material is scratch resistant. Spoiler alert: it isn’t.

Looking forward to trying out the new camera. Should be a nice upgrade from a 12 pro.

 

[Lsbcal]

Now I'm thinking about getting the PLUS size iphone 15. It's about 1/4 inch wider and 1/2 inch taller.

Might be harder to get out of my jeans pocket while sitting especially when behind a car steering wheel. I've worn the same jeans size for years and do not go for tight ones. Would avoid a "grippy" case like I've recently used on my XR.

Pros
. bigger screen for reading ease and showing photos
. 20% more battery life

Cons
. harder to get out of pocket
. 1 oz. more weight (but about the same weight as my XR)
. costs +$100

 

[camfused]

Just ordered a 15 pro. I have always had regular iPhones, so looking forward to a better camera than the regular older iPhones. Not happy with the price though...wow, really getting expensive.

 

[Toast]

DH and I both bought iPhone15 pro maxes today. We have always had android phones so a bit of a transition. Looking forward to learning all the nuances.

 

[braumeister]

PSA: Careful with iPhone 15 and BMWs

If you have an iPhone 15 and drive a BMW, it might be best to avoid charging the device with the vehicle's wireless charging pad for now.

Over the past week, some BMW owners have complained that their iPhone 15's NFC chip no longer works after charging the device with their vehicle's wireless charging pad, according to comments shared on the MacRumors Forums and X, formerly known as Twitter. Affected customers say the iPhone goes into a data recovery mode with a white screen, and the NFC chip is no longer functional after the device reboots.

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/01/bmw-charging-may-break-iphone-15-nfc-chip/

 

[Dash man]

PSA: Careful with iPhone 15 and BMWs



If you have an iPhone 15 and drive a BMW, it might be best to avoid charging the device with the vehicle's wireless charging pad for now.



Over the past week, some BMW owners have complained that their iPhone 15's NFC chip no longer works after charging the device with their vehicle's wireless charging pad, according to comments shared on the MacRumors Forums and X, formerly known as Twitter. Affected customers say the iPhone goes into a data recovery mode with a white screen, and the NFC chip is no longer functional after the device reboots.



https://www.macrumors.com/2023/10/01/bmw-charging-may-break-iphone-15-nfc-chip/

Thanks. I’ve charged mine but didn’t have a problem, but no need to take chances when I can use a charging cord.

 

[davidfin]

DW and I are on the Apple Upgrade Program. A little BTD, but also I promised myself over 10 years ago that I wouldn't stop working until I could afford to buy what I wanted.

Anyway, the AUP includes AppleCare+. Shiny new phone every year. Basically you pay for ½ the cost of a new iPhone and get a new one each year - with AppleCare+. Makes it easy and the only thing I have to think about is what color...

What’s the typical net after trade in?

 

[audreyh1]

I finally got an iPhone 15 - with my husband’s encouragement an iPhone 15 Pro. We have several major trips coming up and the fancier camera should come in handy.

All exciting except that I just went through multi-hour hell with the transfer from the old iPhone, something that has been seamless and continually improving over the past few years. DH had no problems with his iPhone 15 Pro Max late last year. One thing after another, clearly some bugs, and ultimately wasn’t able to get everything directly from my old phone. Last resort nearing midnight I tried a restore from an iPhone 13 iTunes backup from that morning. Thank God that worked.

I may return later with the list of severe problems I ran into - the biggest one involved a web search one it became clear the process was hung up. I had better sleep now.

 

[braumeister]

Last resort nearing midnight I tried a restore from an iPhone 13 iTunes backup from that morning. Thank God that worked.

I've always had good luck with the phone-to-phone transfer when upgrading, but just to be safe I always make a complete backup of the old phone to my laptop just beforehand. Haven't needed it yet, but it's nice to know it's available.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

Mine was seamless from an 8 to 15. One of the selling points of iPhone ecosystem for me although I think most have gotten pretty good at making the process easy. Still debating what I'll do LT across my digital life. Microsoft seems to keep getting worse in their invasiveness, I think Google is evil (but like my Chromebook and Calendar is becoming a lifesaver in managing my post-FIRE habit of overcommitmenting), Macs I'm just not super comfortable navigating so there will be a learning curve. Biggest thing will be compatibility of older files and I'm using an old unsupported version of excel (and sheets just doesn't cut it). All that said, doubt I'll leave iPhone anytime soon but a common OS would be nice.

 

[audreyh1]

What it Took!

I've always had good luck with the phone-to-phone transfer when upgrading, but just to be safe I always make a complete backup of the old phone to my laptop just beforehand. Haven't needed it yet, but it's nice to know it's available.

It’s worth spelling out the roadblocks that blew up my phone-to-phone transfer.

Started out well, got the eSIM info transferred right away, passcode credentials, set up Face ID, iPhone updated to 17.4 which took a while, then the new iPhone got stuck in some AppleID sign-in mode for over 30 minutes. Even though it had already successfully signed in over 30 mins ago as I got a new device signed in notification email from Apple. Maybe it had to resign-in after the updating it’s OS to the latest and that’s where it would get stuck.

Cursory web search it immediately pops up that lots of people had their iPhone 15 phone-to-phone transfers stuck at this point. A long Reddit thread spelled out details. Crazily most people were successful getting past this point by changing their Apple ID password.

So after trying a few things but always getting stuck at this dubious sign-in step I decided to change the Apple ID. Well the AppleID website wouldn’t let me do that because I had “Stolen Device Protection” on on my iPhone. It gave me a list of my devices where I could change the AppleID password but not how to do it without using the web interface. So we ended up turning off the protection on the old iPhone since the new phone was still stuck somewhere in setup where you couldn’t get to anything. I figured out afterwards how to change the AppleID password from System Preferences iCloud options on a laptop or on a iOS device Settings top level top option with your name. Good to know. These things are impossible to search for under Settings anymore. Drives me crazy.

AppleID password changed worked! After forcing restart again it immediately asked for the new password and no longer got stuck in the signing in step. Finally! Now after a couple more steps we got to the all important data transfer stage. I keep a lot of data on my iPhone mostly images and videos so this step can take a while. Well much to my chagrin after about 30 minutes big “Data Transfer Failed” banners on both phones. Looked like transfer got about 80 complete before failing. So I reinitiated this transfer step to try again. Exactly same failure mode the same point.

So I gave up on phone-to-phone transfer. Fortunately I had backed up my old iPhone 13 on my laptop earlier in the day (older OS via iTunes) and initiated a restore from that. Thank goodness this worked seamlessly - just another 30 minutes. And after that succeeded was prompted to connect my existing Apple Watch which worked.

Another thing worth mentioning is that after some setup step failed (instead of just getting hung up) is that the new iPhone would give you the option to reset to factory settings. Well the eSIM credentials had already been transferred to the new phone and wiped on the old, and I didn’t want to chance losing that. So I did the force power off method instead (power button plus volume up button held down). This would generally let me get to a prior setup step and continue from there. We learned later that starting in iOS 15 the factory reset gives you an option to preserve the eSIM - good to know. However the force power off method I used did let me get back to a previous step during setup which meant I didn’t have to keep redoing everything else. I was able to get to the step that let me pick restoring data from my laptop instead of the stage with the phone-to-phone transfer.

DH and I both worked on this for hours which included several web searches which DH undertook after my initial problem. Worth mentioning that we both retired from electrical/computer careers with a lot of software experience as well, and have owned Apple computers and devices forever so we are pretty tech savvy. I guess many folks can run to their Apple Store but our closest is 250 miles away.

 

[bloom2708]

Make sure the phones are on the same version.

Make a full back with Encryption (password required) as that saves as many passwords and settings as possible.

Restore the full backup. Let the apps install and updates install.

Check each app for login settings.

Not sure what was failing, but I've never had this fail from basically iPhone 4 and up.

 

[braumeister]

DH and I both worked on this for hours

I feel for you. Glitches involving an Apple ID (soon to be renamed Apple Account) are the scariest. Glad you were able to work through it.

That's pretty cool about a reset letting you save an eSIM!

 

[Lsbcal]

My iPhone 10 to 15 transfer worked out OK. Some relatively minor work was necessary over the next week or two. I can't remember what all that was about.

Another thought is to have the transfer done at the Apple Store if one is near you. Maybe I will do that the next time around as I don't like to feeling of non-robustness in this process after hearing of Audrey's hassles. Anyway that will be some years in the future. Phew

Audrey, if you are reading this could you have gone to the Apple Store (assuming you were near one) and restarted the procedure? It would be good to know if that is an option as there is a store here in town.

 

[audreyh1]

Make sure the phones are on the same version.

Make a full back with Encryption (password required) as that saves as many passwords and settings as possible.

Restore the full backup. Let the apps install and updates install.

Check each app for login settings.

Not sure what was failing, but I've never had this fail from basically iPhone 4 and up.

My iPhone 13 was already at 17.4. The new iPhone required to upgrade to the latest (17.4) after some of the initial login setups and an eSIM transfer. So we were at same version. You can’t predict what exact iOS version a new iPhone will ship with. They always require update to the latest during setup which takes a while. Best you can do is have your existing iPhone at the latest.

What was apparently failing initially was Apple-ID sign in on the new phone after it restarted after this update. This is clearly a bug in the setup software.

The final data transfer failure - haven’t a clue. Suspicious.

Always having a very recent local backup on a laptop is a good idea even though it can take a lot of drive space. A lot of people use iCloud backup. Hopefully that would have worked as well in my case. We prefer not to use iCloud backup.

I very quickly found out that many many people ran into problems with setup on their new iPhone 15, so people that don’t got lucky that day.

 

[audreyh1]

My iPhone 10 to 15 transfer worked out OK. Some relatively minor work was necessary over the next week or two. I can't remember what all that was about.

Another thought is to have the transfer done at the Apple Store if one is near you. Maybe I will do that the next time around as I don't like to feeling of non-robustness in this process after hearing of Audrey's hassles. Anyway that will be some years in the future. Phew

Audrey, if you are reading this could you have gone to the Apple Store (assuming you were near one) and restarted the procedure? It would be good to know if that is an option as there is a store here in town.

If we had an Apple Store in The Valley I probably would have gone there to buy or pick it up and done the transfer right there instead of having it shipped. They have someone hovering around a particular table helping people set up their just purchased new devices. Probably a good idea to have an iCloud backup or bring a laptop with a backup in case the phone-to-phone transfer fails.

DH had a very old iPhone start failing (screen) while traveling. He was fortunately able to do an iCloud backup and we ordered a phone for pickup the next day. Drove about 80 miles to the nearest Apple Store and experienced setting up a new device while in the store. Phone-to-phone worked seamlessly in this case so didn’t need the backup. He was also able to wipe and turn in his ancient iPhone 10 for recycling.

 

[Lsbcal]

Thanks Audrey, I did have an iCloud backup.