What gives with Joanna Stern? She will find even the smallest negative and blow it out of proportion.
You really, really missed the entire theme and thrust of the review. Here are a few quotations (my emphases added), and my thoughts below:
But it’s also proof that smartphone innovation has plateaued and what we demand most in our newest phones are improvements to the essentials.
This is absolutely 100% true. These devices are already SO good that it's hard to have a feature that warrants amazement. Just because
you either are amazed by this update (and before you jump all over me, I have a 128GB 6S Plus coming on Friday) and she's not saying anything critical here.
So, if the last iPhone’s hardware was just that good, the next iPhone should address the final, remaining complaints we have with smartphones, right? That’s how I decided to evaluate the new phones.
Here's where she tips her hand. She's looking at this iteration of the iPhone as being the "ultimate" phone. We all know that this is designed to get readers (and she did, successfully!) to click and is not at all a reasonable premise. So, lighten up! She telegraphs that this is a somewhat ridiculous premise. What more do you want from her?
This last week, hundreds of people online and in person shared with me what annoys them most about their smartphones, and what they’d want most in their next ones. Over two weeks of testing both the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, I confirmed that Apple has addressed many of the big complaints, but done nothing to address the biggest.
Furthermore, she indicates that she's speaking not only for herself but also for readers/citizens who she's interacted with. So, I don't think she has a vendetta unless lots of other folks do, which is ridiculous. Also, let's be clear that you are being totally hyperbolic by calling this a vendetta. She's making some totally reasonable, entirely warranted criticisms of what she AGREES is the best iPhone yet.
Let’s get this out of the way first. The No. 1 thing people want in a smartphone is better battery life. And the iPhone 6s doesn’t deliver that.
This is true. You can't pretend it's not. Apple has made choices to prioritize thinness over battery life. Battery life could be better, and it is something I hope will be better on the 7.
If there were ever an iPhone that needed more storage, it’s this one, yet Apple continues to rip off customers with a 16GB base model ($649 without payment plan/contract), rather than offer a 32GB one.
This is also true. Apple is being kind of crappy by not offering 32GB as a low-end model. Storage is cheap, and their decision to charge what they do for storage is reasonable insofar as this is a capitalist enterprise, but it's also something we are entirely justified in criticizing them for.
Cases are a huge protection help, but what would help even more is a completely shatterproof, indestructible iPhone. The 6s isn’t that—but it is more durable.
So, a totally unreasonable request: a
completely shatterproof, indestructible phone is hyperbole at its best. Sort of equivalent to your hyperbolic claim that this is a vendetta. So her chief concerns so far are fragility (a sad reality so far of our smartphone-addicted lives), battery life (totally fair criticism), and crap low-end storage with ridiculous upcharges for more storage (absolutely true and fair criticism). What a vendetta!
If you have an iPhone 6, you won’t be overly jealous of those who get a 6s—maybe just a tad envious of those Live Photos. If your iPhone is more than two years old, this is the phone to get. Just make sure to pay Apple’s ransom for the 64GB version. The story of the iPhone 6s is the same as the 5s, or the 4s before it. It is a slightly better iPhone—that must be what the S stands for. And like its “S” predecessors, it doesn’t address all complaints. That’s what the iPhone 7 is for—right, Apple?
Yep, a nasty, vicious, terrifically mean-spirited and unreasonable takedown of the new devices, right...? Except not at all. She concludes with some very true things that we've all known: the S models are not "wow" devices, but incremental iterative upgrades of the previous design. They've always been slightly better. If rightly criticizing Apple for poor storage and limited innovation in battery life while unreasonably hoping for a shatterproof device, in a review
explicitly stated to be looking to see this as the "ultimate iPhone" counts as a vendetta...well, I'd hate to see how you react to something that is a truly unfair or unreasonably critical review.
