Wesley's Tool-Box

I've been using an iPhone ever since it started going on sale in Korea back in December 2009, with iPhone 3GS. The original iPhone was not compatible with Korean mobile networks and at the time of the release of iPhone 3G, laws effectively prevented anyone from using foreign cellphones on the domestic networks other than in the form of roaming. People seeking to use the latest phones from abroad eventually succeeded in persuading the lawmakers to change the rules and paved the way for an official domestic launch of the iPhone as well.

I sought to get the latest iPhone as they were up for pre-order on the domestic carrier's website. So I was able to get mine usually on the first day of the Korean release day. This continued all the way up to iPhone 5, when I was invited to the carrier's launch event, as evidenced by a certain media photo. But wanting to get my hands on even quicker, I sought out the first-wave releases from overseas starting with 5S. And with that I started doing some in-depth reviews, too.

In this way, I went through seven generations of iPhone for the past six years. The only ones I skipped were either the lower-cost version (5C) or the smaller version (6 and 6S).


Since I never sold the iPhones, they always circulated within the family. And with the most recent upgrade cycle, all the older phones not in use were returned to me for a big reunion. Yes, I now had seven iPhones in my hands.

Luckily, all of the phones were in good working conditions in general, needing just a recharge or a change of battery to return it back to life. This prompted me to do a big comparison that let me see how far iPhones have come during all these years.

One of the features that stand out on the iPhone 6S series is the 3D Touch. It's something you can immediately notice when you use the device for the first time because many of the stock apps take advantage of it. Basically, the phone's screen now knows how hard you push your finger against it, and translates it into triggering different functions.

In the home screen, a light touch on the app icon still launches it. But when you push it a bit harder, Quick Actions menu is triggered for the supported apps, letting you do get into various tasks even before the app is actually launched. It's something that I didn't know I wanted, but I would definitely miss it if it were gone. I'd be slightly frustrated to use older generation iPhones now thanks to this, sort of like how I feel about the lack of Touch ID on iPhone 5 and older. As it's the most obvious way that an app can be extended for 6S series, many of the 3rd party apps are now getting updated to enable this.


Here's a comparison video I made to show how 3D Touch lets you do more. On the left is an iPhone 6 Plus, and on the right is a 6S Plus. When I push the Photos app hard, 6S Plus shows the Quick Actions whereas 6 Plus only recognizes the long press and wants to know if I want to delete any apps.

Once into the app, pressing hard on a photo in 6S Plus lets me "peek", i.e. preview the photo, and if I push even harder, I "pop" into the photo and it's loaded on the screen. A light tapping feedback happens as I do this due to the Taptic Engine. On 6 Plus, nothing happens. This peek/pop interaction can be seen in many other stock apps, so I'm having fun trying to push the screen a lot to see there's anything more I can do.

After getting my brand new iPhone 6S Plus on its launch day in Japan, I brought it to Korea soon after. As the family enjoyed the Chuseok holidays, my daughter Celine was given the honour of opening the box of this latest iPhone. This might be becoming an annual tradition.


Compared to last year, Celine handled the unboxing much better. She definitely knew what she was supposed to do now. In the box was an iPhone that was almost exactly identical to what she unboxed last year. She happily took it out of the box to show it to everyone in the family.

After I installed watchOS 2 beta 4 when it came out on July 22, 2015 (July 21 at Apple HQ), my Apple Watch felt more sluggish than usual. Even the terrible beta 1 wasn't like this. What's worse, the watch froze up after a few hours. I noticed that it'd never last more than 4 hours at a time, requiring a forced restart (pressing side button and digital crown together for 10 seconds) to get it working again.

I tried resetting and restoring, then resetting and setting up the device as new. Neither fixed the issue. Somehow, this beta was unusable on my watch. If this problem was happening to everyone, I would've heard about it and Apple would be pulling the beta, but this wasn't the case. Most people were actually saying it worked better than previous betas, which baffled me. Then I eventually found someone else having the same problem.

It turns out, having the watch face set to "Simple" was the culprit. Using another watch face ("Modular" was recommended) supposedly solved the problem. So I changed the face to Modular and indeed the problem went away. I had been using the Simple face for nearly 3 months, so I never thought of changing it to anything else. Who knew a bug in the beta would force me to do otherwise?

Using Simple face on beta 4 had serious impact on battery life as well - about as bad as the infamous beta 1. Also, it kept consuming battery while the device froze up, too. I went to sleep with the fully charged watch, only to find out that it froze up about two hours in, and had 37% of charge left after 5 hours when I woke up. So I'm guessing the watch face steadily hogged system resources until everything else became inoperable, but kept going.

So if any of the developers with watchOS 2 beta 4 are experiencing lock ups and slow performance, avoid Simple watch face and switch to something different before resetting your watch.

As many people including myself noticed, iOS 9 beta 1 and watchOS 2 beta 1 had horrible battery life. After two weeks of bearing this, beta 2 of both OSes arrived on June 23 (June 24 in Korea), amidst the hope that they would fix or lessen this battery problem. The one for Apple Watch was pulled just after release, but then re-uploaded a few hours later. I was able to have these betas installed on my iPhone 6 Plus and my Apple Watch as soon as I could.

It's now been more than two full days since and Apple Watch has finally been launched in Korea with people lining up in front of the store despite the rain. For those people who were now wondering if the new beta is anything worth diving into for their shiny new watch, here's my verdict. Yes, it's better than 2.0 beta 1, but no, it's not quite as battery-efficient as 1.0.1. As for the iOS 9 beta 2, its battery life is back to being as good as 8.3 for my iPhone 6 Plus, which was excellent.

This is good news for iPhones, but for Apple Watch, sticking to a non-beta version is still recommended if you value long battery life. As you've seen before, 1.0 / 1.0.1 version delivered about 26 hours of continuous usage on average for me, which included daily exercising and moderate interactions. 2.0 beta 1 effectively halved this, often getting only 12 hours and conservative use barely pushing it to 18 hours. So I'd say that's roughly 15 hours per charge, to be generous. With 2.0 beta 2, I've been getting about 21 hours of use daily so far, barely good enough for one-charge-a-day routine but lacking any comfortable margin.

Meanwhile, the apps do run smoother again, almost like 1.0.1, making the experience less annoying overall. There are still some noticeable bugs, like the one that prevents scrolling with digital crown in certain notifications. This has been persisting since beta 1. Another problem I am seeing is that the voice call volume is quite low and rebooting doesn't fix it. This one seems to be new for this beta. Anyone who's seeking cutting edge, beware.