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Life

The Phantom Button: Pros & Cons of Upgrading my iPhone

Sierra Vendas
The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not reflect the views of Her Campus.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Pace chapter.

I’ve had an iPhone 8 Plus since 2019, which is before my freshman year of high school. In five years of having this phone, I was only forced to get it repaired twice, once to replace the battery and once to purchase more iCloud storage. Needless to say, I was undyingly loyal to my iPhone 8 Plus and all its outdated features. I persevered through all the hate and defended my device. Every chuckle regarding my home button, every comment about how I didn’t have the calculator app downloaded to save storage, every slight about my terrible camera quality, I let it roll off my back. That is until I was forced to upgrade my phone approximately three weeks ago. I went from my glorious 8 Plus to a high-tech iPhone 14 Plus, but was it really an upgrade? Here are my honest thoughts and complaints about trading in my iPhone 8 Plus.

Pros: 

Battery Life 

One serious perk of having a new phone is that the battery life is so healthy. I can leave my dorm in the morning with my phone on 100% and return after dinner with my phone percentage still in the double digits. With my iPhone 8 Plus, I had to invest in multiple portable chargers and bring a wire with me everywhere I went. Concerts were a nightmare. If I left my house with a fully charged phone, half the battery life would be wasted simply in my commute to the event, leaving me almost no freedom to record the concert. This tragedy most notably transpired on the night I attended Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour Tour. I was unable to document all her glory and, to this day, it haunts me. That being said, I do appreciate having more leeway with what applications I use when I have no power source. Hopefully, I won’t have to get the battery replaced in this phone for a long time, unlike my experience with my iPhone 8 Plus (may she rest in peace).  

The Luxury of Having Storage

As Apple’s empire grows, the company continues to offer more variety regarding iPhone storage. Unfortunately, these developments weren’t available to me in 2019. My IPhone 8 Plus only had 64GB of storage, so I was forced to purchase more for every big event. For a teenage girl with a Pinterest obsession and compulsive need to take photos, this was a no-go. At one point, nearly all my apps were offloaded, and my camera application would simply open to a black screen. I was eventually able to quiet this pressing issue by purchasing the most iCloud storage possible, but it’s much easier to manage my storage with the iPhone 14 Plus. I figured that since it was my first new phone in five years, I should splurge on general iPhone storage, so I now have 256GB. Having this much freedom is dangerous. I now have the ability to download more than just my necessary apps, and I actually have games on my phone. That may sound silly, but if 15-year-old me heard that, she would freak out.   

Camera Quality 

Camera quality and the outdated photo features were something I constantly got hate for when I had my iPhone 8 Plus. My old phone produced possibly the grainiest, blurriest, and most terrible photos to be captured by an iPhone. The quality of my pictures was so bad, that I eventually stopped posting on social media out of embarrassment and said farewell to mirror selfies. Every time I posted a mirror selfie, it was met with comments about my phone’s singular camera. But fret no more! The camera quality of the iPhone 14 Plus has actually made me post-positive, and I find myself taking more photos of unimportant things, simply because everything looks so clear. Additionally, while this may be considered a dying trend, I have taken up an obsession with 0.5, or ultrawide, photos. This wasn’t something that I thought I would find particularly luxurious, but I have definitely enjoyed these new photo features.       

Cons: 

The Phantom Button

Going into upgrading my phone, I knew that the absence of a home button would be a difficult adjustment for me. Since sixth grade, I had a home button, and it had become normal for me. The iPhone 8 Plus utilized fingerprint identification for Apple Pay, App Store authentication, and password filling. Over the years, I had adjusted my grip of the phone to allow me to access the button more easily, something that I am working on now. Although Face ID is quite fancy and some may prefer it, it does frustrate me to no end. Oftentimes when I’m studying, I find myself clicking the base of my phone to unlock it, but there’s nothing there. I’m then forced to fully pick up my phone and hold it in front of my face to use it. This complaint may sound ridiculous, but, in the two seconds this takes, I could’ve already been scrolling through Pinterest.   

Face ID Nightmare

That brings me to my next point: Face ID isn’t as efficient as I believed my home button to be. My thumb ID could work in every lighting and at every angle, something facial recognition seemingly can’t achieve. While one could chalk this up to how I set up my Face ID in a rush and quite lazily, I don’t necessarily believe that a perfect setup of Face ID would produce better results. I find myself having to enter my passcode manually much more often than I would’ve on my marvelous iPhone 8 Plus.   

Muscle Memory 

Overall, the biggest struggle of upgrading to an iPhone 14 Plus is learning all of its mechanisms. In comparing the two phones, there are some major differences such as facial recognition, camera quality, and display size. There are also smaller differences that I recognize and am forced to adapt to every day. For example, when me and my roommate went to see Back to the Future on Broadway and were asked to shut off our phones, I panicked because holding down the off button was only summoning Siri and not shutting my phone down. My kind roommate then showed me how to actually shut the new phone off. Nonetheless, situations like these have been occurring every so often since I got the new phone, and, while they are challenging to figure out at times, I have to navigate them and embrace the upgrade.  

Sierra is a sophomore, Digital Marketing major and a Graphic Design minor at Pace University. She is a second year staff writer for Her Campus at Pace and enjoys writing more humorous pieces about pop culture. In the past, Sierra has written for her high school newsletter known as "The Dawg Print" and taken several journalism classes and she is looking forward to expanding on this background. In addition to Her Campus at Pace, Sierra is also a member of the Pace Advertising Club, the American Marketing Association at Pace, and P.A.C.E. Board. She enjoys brainstorming for both these clubs and especially likes that they expose her to people of all backgrounds and stories. Outside of school and work Sierra spends most of her time listening to music, watching romantic comedies, binging sit-coms, shopping for clothes she probably doesn’t need, going to museums, or exploring new places to eat. She likes a variety of different musical artists and will never turn down the opportunity to go to a concert. Sierra frequently watches the movies A Rainy Day in New York and Breakfast at Tiffany’s but is no stranger to shows such as The Office and New Girl. Sierra is also interested in museum hopping however her favorite exhibits remain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.