mergeconflict327 === [00:00:00] James: Frank, I'm not gonna lie, I just got my eyes on the glorious brand new iPhone 14 Pro. We had friends over last night and they brought their phone over. Now Heather actually got her phone, but we're wait. For after our trip to turn it on, because I know there's a few, Well, I just don't rush it. Right. Let's give uh, 16.1 some time to bake. So we're gonna wait for that process and transfer things over. Cuz we just, we had actually came early. It came like two weeks early, but our friends came over, They had it. And they had it in a case, and I was like, Oh, that's interesting. Okay. And then they took it out of the case and I said, Wow, those are some really big cameras on [00:00:47] Frank: that thing. Oh my goodness. It, it, it reminds me of those like 1950s movie cameras you see in like old movies. Mm-hmm. , it's like three giant lenses sticking out. Like I feel like they should rotate around or there should be like a giant cranky, just kind of crank it in order to record video or something like that. The camera bump is no joke. That thing is. Big, big what, what, what size phone was it? The max or the, The Normy. [00:01:16] James: Normal. Normal Pro. Normal Pro, Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, at this point I, I don't know what madman would get the, the, the bigger phones. I feel like the bigger phones are on the way out. The smaller phones are way better. No. What'd you [00:01:28] Frank: get? I got, I got the, the normal, but it's still pretty huge. It is. I've been testing on my, uh, iPhone five s and like the five s. Fits in the little corner there, you know, on the phone. So you are totally smart, I think to wait a tiny bit because James, I have had the worst up upgrade process, task initiative, terrible journey, uh, ever upgrading my phone. So I think you might be a little smart, uh, going slow, but I, I do, I I'm impressed by your keeping it in the box. I don't know if I have that kind of, [00:02:05] James: It's in the box. Yeah. We have no idea what it looks like at all. And , Heather got the silver one. Now I'm gonna get her old iPhone 11 pro, which is nice because we got that side by side comparison of the 11 Pro, which has three cameras as well on it. Right. So that was like the first one to kind of introduce that. Uh, cause I think the 10, the X Pro add two and then the 11 had three. Yeah. And they're much thinner. And it is much lighter in general. And both of these phones compared to my tiny iPhone SE two look ginormous. But I do like my iPhone SE too. But you know, I, I saw they had the purple one. Very nice purple in general. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, overall the, the owner's phone seemed like she really liked it. You know, it was a good upgrade. Really liked the cameras, you know, the photos that were coming out of it. Uh, her. Breakdown because we've heard a lot of things and I kind of wanna get your experience too, cause I'll tell you what we're gonna go through soon, which probably what many people are gonna go through. We, I didn't get any insight from her as to what her process looked like, but what it sounded like was she was on Verizon. and they're like, Hey, if you just give us your old phone, you get a new phone. Mm-hmm. for free, basically. Right. Or some upgrade process. And they did the, they did the transfer, they did everything in store, you know? Yeah. And I'm not a believer, Frank, in going into stores because feels like it's the worst waste. It's the worst. It's the waste of my time, and it's the worst. And no one really wants to help me. At the end of the day, [00:03:32] Frank: I, I'm gonna have a counter to that. I'm gonna, Oh my gosh. Have a good store. Well, no, I take that back. It was still terrible in its own way. Everything, a part of my upgrade process was terrible. Um, I was, I was honestly in the unboxing, slightly shocked at the size of the phone. Not only are, is the camera bump huge, but the phone's bigger than the 11 Pro. I've been rocking the 11 Pro. up till now. Mm-hmm. . And at first I was like, Oh no, what have I gotten myself into because it, it, I don't know if it's actually heavier or what, but it definitely feels heavier and it's got that camera pump. Um, but the screen is gorgeous. And so, and it was shiny and I got the silver one and it was very pretty. No, no doubt, very pretty phone. But my initial unboxing was like, uh, I'm not sure it is growing. The physical design's growing on me. Literally. It's huge. [00:04:26] James: Okay, so I do wanna learn about your upgrade process, cuz our upgrade process is gonna look like this is today. Heather has the iPhone 11 Pro with a physical sim from Mint Mobile. Mm-hmm . And she will be migrating that physical sim over to an em because as we all know, the iPhone. Um, Fourteens only have eims. Now, I did confirm on the official Mint Mobile Reddit, that Mint Mobile is already for the iPhone 14. They have a whole video, They have a whole thing But it does seem like the process is a little strange from my understanding. I gotta like install their app and I gotta do a few things. So, oh, I'm not positive how it's gonna work itself out, but you know, we bought this phone from Apple Unlocked, which is also. This was like a very tricky one mixed way. The [00:05:18] Frank: best. I love our locked phones. [00:05:20] James: But they also, like, I couldn't buy the phone unlocked from Best Buy. They wouldn't let me. Mm-hmm. , like, there was no option, only from Apple. And I was like, This is really weird. I, And even the Apple one was, it didn't even say unlocked, it was like, activate this later. And I was like, Yeah. What was that even mean? [00:05:36] Frank: Just, yeah, just, I don't know why I don't, I don't even know why that's a thing still, especially with the eims and everything. Um, I, I actually had a problem with the eim, but I'm, I'm hoping, I'm just gonna tell you all the problems I had, and you just do the opposite of what I did. Okay. And you should be good. Okay. All right. I'm [00:05:55] James: right. So Frank gets the box, signs the box for delivers. You pick it up in a store and then you open it and you're like, Let's do this. And you're back home. You're like, I should, I recorded unboxing video. I don't know. There's none of those on the [00:06:07] Frank: internet. Yeah, that's exactly what people want see. Is an unboxing an iPhone 14? No. Uh, the first thing I got in my head was, uh, your voice. James. You're always haunting me. You're always with me. . Oh gosh. Oh, no. Yours was, uh, Apple has made the upgrade process so smooth things. It's all integrated and it's integrated and there's just buttons you should click. So I brought up the Settings app on my old iPhone and it's all okay about to get a new iPhone, buddy, let's do this. And I'm like, Yeah, Apple, let's do this. Let's do this. Excited. [00:06:37] James: That's exciting. Like I've never had that happen. I was like, I want this to be my phone so I can go through this process. I'm [00:06:43] Frank: excited. I'm like, this is gonna be the best upgrade process ever. . Uh, so I click the button and they're like, Hey, you know, the best way to do this is to do an iCloud backup, which I'm about to tell lots of horrors and everything, but I still concur. iCloud backup is definitely the. The way to do this. Um, Apple hopefully offered something I've never seen them offer before. They're like, Hey, uh, you may be low on iCloud space. And they were a little vague on whether I was low or , you know, whatever. And they're like, We're gonna do this thing where we're gonna give you as much space as you need to back up your phone. Oh. And then after 20 days, you can decide whether to keep that space or not. Wow. And I'm like, I'm just in a yes mood and I'm like that. That's clever. That sounds nice to them. There's also a little doubt in the back of my head, James, which is I've backed up this phone for the last three years is fine. Every night to iCloud, and I've always had space, so what the heck is this? , but I'm in, I'm in yes. Mode. So I just say yes to that and it's like, Cool, cool. We're, we're gonna back up now. And I'm like, Cool, cool. We're gonna back up now. And usually it takes, what, 30 minutes, couple hours tops to do a iCloud back up. And so I just set the phone down and, uh, walk away because I want to do this right. Apple says I should do a backup. Bam. [00:08:03] James: They know, they know I'm doing it. Right, Right. Yeah. I think, I mean, this is the process I would've went through. I would've been like, Cool. Got it. Did the thing or that make sense? I'm in. Yeah, I'm in. So [00:08:14] Frank: I, I, I check on it. After like an hour, I'm like, It must be done by now. I, I applaud myself for my patience. I haven't been, you know, checking on it, and it's still at like 30%. and the bar hasn't really moved in the last hour, and all of a sudden it's saying that my backup size is 128 gigabytes, and I'm like, Huh, that sounds high. Given that the last backup was six gigabytes, did [00:08:39] James: they just, Did they decide to just back up your entire hard drive? [00:08:43] Frank: I think what they decided to do was back up the photo library, which is already an iCloud because I have 120 gigabytes of photos. Yeah. I have six gigabytes of data and I think for whatever reason it wanted to do a giant, Backup. So I'm like, Hey, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound. How long could it take to upload 128 gigabytes of data? Well, I left it literally all day. I got back to the phone at midnight and it was now at 40% saying it's gonna take another 30 hours to complete. So what do you do now, James? What? What's, what's the game? [00:09:27] James: I hope that it's plugged into power to begin with . And, you know, and the thing that, Here's the thing. When you go into an iCloud backup or any backup for that matter, the one thing you don't wanna do is remove the phone or the device. You don't wanna, you don't even wanna [00:09:43] Frank: touch it. I, I, yeah, exactly. I'm not listening to podcasts on, like, I have not been touching my phone. I've been, I've been playing with my iPads. It was all fine. I was, I was a good Apple citizen. I kept saying yes. Well, I, I gave up. I'm just like, Cancel this stupid backup. I'll, I'll restore the phone from the backup that's 12 hours old, because while I'll lose a few text messages or something, even then, probably won't. So who cares? So I'm like, it's, it's midnight, it's time to set up this little phone. So I start setting up the little phone. And, uh, this one, I'm, I'm gonna blame this on you, James. This one, uh, this is your fault. Uh, a, a week or two ago, uh, you egged me on to install iPhone 16.1 beta on my iPhone. Oh. Oh, oops. Yep. Guess, guess what? My backups are encoded as James [00:10:36] James: iPhone 16. One [00:10:38] Frank: backup. Yeah. And so beta one, I should say. Okay. And so in, after all this setup stuff, so like I do the face ID thing, I do the, I do the adding credit cards and everything. It's like, Oh, hey, by the way, your iCloud backup is for this beta version of iOS, and we're gonna need to install that now, in the middle of the in setup process, it's like, we're, we're just gonna install a beta buddy. And I'm like, Oh, no. Oh no. I didn't know what to do. What would you do, James? [00:11:09] James: You know, Apple knows at this point. They, you know, they, you know, they, they know. I, I wouldn't, don't touch it. Just let it go, Let it, let it do its thing. [00:11:21] Frank: So it's gonna install 16.1 beta three. My phone, my old f old phone is on beta one, so I'm like, Uhoh, are those even gonna be compatible? So in the middle of the setup process, I have, its start updating, its operating system. It has to download five gigabytes, , and then I set my old phone to update the operating system too. And I'm like, it's a race. who can update the, who can update to beta three? [00:11:48] James: You're on on, you're on LTE while doing this, right? You're like, Hey, I got unlimited data. Those are gonna be good. I got [00:11:55] Frank: unlimited data, but they throttle me. So no , I'm just, I'm just watching the gigabytes fly by at this point. I'm just desperate, you know, . Um, so finally, um, all the phones update and that's wonderful. Uh, Do you think, Do you think I'm on a road to success? Do, do you see any potential roadblocks in front of me? [00:12:18] James: Okay, so there's a, there's a few potential issues here. Is that, Well, I mean, I like that Apple has detected, Hey, this iCloud backup is from a newer beta. We're gonna install that beta because you need that compatibility layer to be there. Although I also think it's really fascinating, like I wonder if they know what version that iPhone is on because they do, they need to be in sync. I I, Well, I guess the beta probably needs to be in sync because, It has some certs that you had installed or something like that, [00:12:48] Frank: huh? Yeah, I think there's even a weirder thing too. I think somewhere in beta three of 16.1, uh, do you recall when you're doing like a transfer between the phones, it puts up like a little fuzzy ball and you have to use the camera, the other phone to scan the fuzzy ball? Yes. And it's like they're not QR code, I guess, whatever. Mm-hmm. . That thing. Um, a fun fact in the later betas, there's a dark mode for that. Fun fact, if you have an earlier beta, the camera app can't recognize the fuzzy ball. Oh, no. Yeah, it worked fine with a white background, but the moment it goes into dark mode, it can't scan it anymore, so that was fun. So fun fact, I never knew. But uh, there is an alternative to that. If you do some clicking around, find some buttons, you can, can actually get a manual code transferred between them. So I had to do that because the camera app wasn't working. So that was a fun little addition to all that. But that, that's not a problem. I, I worked around that. [00:13:50] James: You're no problem. You're back in the process. You're back in the fall. Yeah. To iPhone 14 pro goodness. [00:13:57] Frank: Ironically, I'm at about 14 hours of this upgrade process. So . Um, here, here's the fun one. Okay, so finally I get to get, I do a bunch of things and I go select the backup of my old phone and it pops up the most helpful dialogue, James. It says, We see you had begun a new backup. Oh, we're gonna sit here and wait until that backup is done and then it initiates the backup of the other photo. My God. [00:14:28] James: Now, is this the backup of the one that was doing all the photos or is the new backup that you did annually? [00:14:33] Frank: This is it. Trying to do a new backup, which for some reason is 128 gigabyte backup and it should just be a six gigabyte backup. And it's the one that I waited 12 hours and it never finished. [00:14:46] James: Oh geez. Geez. You just waited longer. Like, you know, just cuz you buy a thousand dollar phone doesn't mean you get to use it right away. You gotta wait, you gotta wait. Those precious hours, , [00:14:57] Frank: I. I, I might be getting a little frustrated at this point. And so I'm like, Well, you know what, I, I, I'm tired of this. I don't know what to do. And so I canceled out of the setup process and it's like, Hey, buddy, we're gonna reset your phone now, , [00:15:14] James: which is not also, which is also a long process too, if anyone's Yeah. You know, the resetting on the phone, it's at least better than the resetting of the watch, but, um, it's still not a, it sit around for. 30 minutes. Right. 40 minutes, whatever. [00:15:28] Frank: So I don't know what to do at this point. What, what would you do, James? [00:15:34] James: I mean, I feel like the ba, the iCloud backup has led you as astray mm-hmm. , and they messed up there somehow with that process. Uh, and I don't know how, Cause yeah, all the, all the world's bandwidth is now being sucked up by iCloud backups. But I think that the right protocol would be to cancel out of it at this point and then say, Okay, let me just. Man. I guess when I get, when I get my phone, I guess I would do an iCloud backup as well, or I guess I would, Yeah. Now, I guess, I guess there was the other question, right? Oh, that's right. Cause you already had the other one going. So now at this point, you, you can't restore for MyCloud, is that correct? It's like you food barred the entire system. [00:16:16] Frank: As far as I can tell at my last attempt, I'm, I'm willing to try again. Um, but I do have two options in front of me. Uh, my old method was always to do an encrypted iTunes. Back up. Ooh. Retro classic Deluxe. Yes. Yes. iOS two territory here. So you plug your phone in, you. Alt option when you click the button so you can get an encrypted backup of your phone. And that's important so that all your key chain stuff comes through and yeah, basically all the key chain stuff. And so I was tempted to do that, but I was like, Jeepers, it's 128 gigabytes. I don't even know if I have enough hard drive space from this. Like, I dunno what to do. Um, and alternate number three is you can do a phone to phone. Transfer of all your data. Uh, the downside of that being your phones are basically outta commission for three to four hours. So given those options, what do you do? I guess you [00:17:20] James: iTunes back it up. [00:17:23] Frank: Well, I, I decided to go for the phone to phone transfer. Phone to phone transfer. Okay. Okay. So I started that process and then it said something like, Your phones will be ready in five hours. And then I was like, You know what? I'm tired of this. Nope. No . And so I canceled that one and reset the phone second or third time, great. I decided to cl try iCloud again, but this time I logged into iCloud uh, settings with an iPad and went through and managed all my backups and got rid of that pending backup thing. And so I now had a clean backup at the top of my iCloud list. Hopefully they would ignore the one that had started earlier. [00:18:07] James: Okay. I like this. I like where this is going. Yeah, it seems like it's back on track. Feel like it's, you know, moving a little bit. I like, I like this. I feel like what has happened here, this was not the intended experience that Apple was going for, by the way. Yeah. So I want, I wanna say like, I don't believe that, that this is, Apple was intending in any [00:18:31] Frank: way. No. And so my advice is still do the iCloud backup. That is what's gonna work. Yeah. In this story. Um, just don't do it with a beta version. Don't don. Get, get rid of yours, James. Or wait until 16 point one's out and get rid of your beta and then do your backup and transfer. Mm-hmm. just with a beta. Um, other than that, they can work and just, just use the one from the previous night. You don't have to do a super recent one. Who cares what's happened in the morning? Yeah, It, it all refreshes off off of servers and stuff anyway. Oh, no, [00:19:03] James: no. Let me ask cuz my friends are gonna ask me on the internet. Is it really required to do an iCloud backup and restore? Because what if I just said, Give me a fresh phone, I'll log into my iCloud. [00:19:15] Frank: Oh, absolutely. And I forgot that was option number four. And I contemplated, I even started moving in that direction. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna erase all my history. Yeah. Start a new life, new frank, new phone. Yeah. You know who this, um, It's gonna be great . [00:19:32] James: Cause it'll, it will get your key chain, it will get your contacts, it'll get all your stuff. It won't know your apps, basically. Well, I guess I would know your app data, app [00:19:40] Frank: data. No, it throws away the app data. So that's all gone. Unless, unless the app is server bound and it's been syncing the data and [00:19:48] James: so you gotta log into everything [00:19:50] Frank: again. You gotta log into everything again and it will lose the data of apps that store data locally. And I have a bunch of. Honestly, video games , where it, they don't back up to iCloud. You know that the, the record on there is the record on there. And I just kept thinking of all these little things where I didn't wanna lose the data. A few of 'em are my own, um, in development apps that aren't on the app store and all that data would vanish. Because it's just not packed up and there's no way to transfer it or anything like that. There's ways to transfer it, but it's ugly and terrible. So, yeah, so it, it is a very good option. Start with a clean slate and I did consider it. Um, but for all those reasons, I opted out. [00:20:35] James: Got it. [00:20:36] Frank: Okay. All right. And then, and then the iCloud backup work, James. That's it. Boom, boom. Apple. It just works. Um, , I, I was very angry because the iCloud backup for some reason, didn't restore all my text messages. So I only have text messages going back two years, which as. Data pack. I just, I hate, but at the same time, I don't read old text messages, so just move on with your life, Frank. But it does bother me a bit that I, I lost that history there, especially when I went through all this effort to get a backup. I'm like, Well, I, maybe I should've just done a clean slate. [00:21:18] James: Yeah. That, that's, that's a, that's the bummer part, which is like, Hey, I, I spent the time to get everything, and yet you didn't give me everything. That's always my struggle with, you know, even. And I haven't really looked on windows and like how that process works. I know on Mac it's a similar process, right? It's like, Hey, I got a Mac here. I got a Mac here. Like bring it over. I actually haven't looked on Windows recently, but like if I have a tower and a tower, like do I move things over? Like I probably don't because if I look at my hard drive right now, It's in the red and it's got 25 gigs left. Right. So unless I'm putting like a four terabyte drive in there, maybe I don't want all the history of all the things. It's always my fear. Right? It's like, do I actually want all the history of all the things all the time or not? [00:22:01] Frank: Yeah. But like your text message history is the size of one movie. Like, That's [00:22:07] James: true. That's true. That is a great point. Is like, yeah, the, when I, when we were going through the iCloud system the other day, Yesterday because we were talking about how, you know, you can, you can actually go into your iCloud in, not in the I, not in the iCloud, but you can go into the mess the, You can go into general iPhone storage, iMessage, and then you can say, Oh, hey, this person sent me like a gig of video. Maybe I don't need those anymore from five years ago. I'll just like skip that. But you're right, the text, the actual text is the important part at the end of the. [00:22:43] Frank: Yeah, I, I'm an old computer user. I know media vanishes after time. , yeah. Bit ro and all that kind of stuff. Um, but yeah, like the text, it's absolutely nothing. Who cares? That should all just be included very quickly. Uh, so I have a phone that's somewhat transferred. There's just, just one little thing left to do. What's left to do [00:23:05] James: well. The fear that I have, which is apparently now multiple fears, but the fear I always had was not the iCloud bag. Cause I figured that would always work. But like I mentioned in the very beginning of this podcast, we're going from, I'm going from a world, and Heather would be going from a world of E, not, not eim, physical sim to eim, which I think is the way to go because by the. EMS fantastical. I specifically, even though my iPhone does have an I Essem, I bought an an Android Pixel four, um, for like 200 bucks. Used as a burner phone for when I travel out of the country because I'm on my mobile. There is out of the country, but it's expensive. But you can get international, International eims through the app store, configure them in five seconds on your phone. And you're good to go. I just didn't wanna mess with my normal phone cause I'm like, I don't understand eims yet. And I know there's like, Multiple eims and all this other stuff. I'm like, I don't get it. So I'm like, let me just do it on a phone that is only connected to wifi. Most beyond when I travel and they're fantastical like I have, I'm ready for all of Europe, every country in Europe. I got three gigs of data, $12 for the next 30 months. It's like amazing. So that's crazy. Ridiculous. So my assumption going from physical to em. At least with Mint Mobile. I don't really know. I guess, I mean, I like the physical to physical cause just put it in the thing and it just works, right? The em, I guess I gotta configure it through the app and that's what I did on the, the, the helo is the one that I use. I'll put a link to that if I can remember in the show notes. But, uh, pretty much the alo. There's a few ways of doing it. One is click a button that that's good. I like click a button, it just installs it. Number two is scan a QR code. That's kind of cool. And then number three is manual. And you definitely don't wanna get to the manual phase because the manual phase involves like, A bajillion numbers and digits and this thing, and I feel like that's just a bad situation. So my assumption is that the next step is that you have a phone. It seems like it's in a state that's like, okay, you know, minus text messages, but you don't have internet yet besides wifi. So is the next step in your process get this thing on on the internet? [00:25:29] Frank: Oh, the, the internet comes pretty quickly. They make you do that in the setup process very early on. Um, so it's, it's the telephone number transfer. You're absolutely right. I was thinking, uh, there's actually an additional one. I gotta transfer the watch over and the watch is cellular, so I didn't wanna transfer the cellular watch because that has a weird eim pairing with the phone so that it replicates the phone. And so I'm like, Well, I better get this, uh, phone number transferred done. And I, I didn't know what to do either. Like, , what am I supposed to do? ? I don't know. Yeah, normally you just popped out the sim and jam it into the other one and then complained [00:26:05] James: and, and on your old phone, did you have an EIM or did you have a physical [00:26:08] Frank: sim? I still had a physical [00:26:10] James: sim old school. So we're in the same boat. We're in the same boat. Yeah. It's a mystery. And were there directions? Was it a mystery from Apple? They're like, Hey, good luck. [00:26:19] Frank: So I don't know what triggers this at all, but once the phone finally got set up, you know the iCloud vaguely restoring on all that kind of stuff. It pops up a little, Hey, we see this is a new phone of yours. Look at that Apple integration. So, Ooh, says, uh, looks like you're trying to transfer a phone number here. Would you like us to handle that for you? We, we'll do it with just one click, and I'm like, I'm sure you will. Apple one, Click this buddy that, [00:26:44] James: that sounds, I mean, from your experience over the last 24 hours, it seems what can, can go wrong? [00:26:49] Frank: What can go wrong? Uh, so they present our, uh, it's, it's nice. Somehow they detected I was T-Mobile. That must be in a database. And then, Uh, they have you enter the phone number, the last four digits of social security number. I enter all that kind of stuff, hit the button, and a very helpful error message comes up saying account type not supported. Okay. Is the only option there. Oh, okay. I know nothing about eim. I, I kinda vaguely refuse to Google eims how they're supposed to work, what you're supposed to do. I'm mostly just angry. It's something like 3:30 AM and I decide that's a problem for tomorrow. Frank and I go to bed cuz that that's too many hours of trying to set up a phone. So I went to bed and defeat that. I couldn't transfer my phone or my watch. [00:27:46] James: No . This is also, by the way, for most people, The, the most essential part of having a phone is making it work outside of your house, . And then two, it's also the most terrifying part because the eim like, is your phone number ? Like, Yeah. And that phone number is your identity. [00:28:07] Frank: I use it for all those code things, you know, two factor, you know, I use it for important stuff. So, and, and it's fine with the old phone still working, but they're diverging, right? Like in my head, these two databases are diverging now, and I'm like, I do not want these phones to get out of sync. I don't wanna lose data and all that. Uh, but fortunately, I had a good night's sleep. Woke up all refreshed, drank a ton of coffee and one wheel to the T-Mobile store. And uh uh, you can guess everything went really well after that too, right? [00:28:39] James: Okay, so you get there. Here's the best part of, like, I have gone into at and t and T-mobile stores and like what happens? Like they have like a fancy stand, they have like an iPad in their hand. Like, Oh, how can I help you today? Huh? And I was like, Well, you know, I got, got eim. I got this new phone trying to set it up. Okay. Do make a reservation online. No, You mean in my phone? Like it doesn't work and Yeah. Spend a thousand dollars on it and I give, yeah, y'all like a hundred dollars every month. So like, I like for that to continue to work and I'd like to not lose my phone number and then the error message and like, Cool. Who puts you on a wait list? I'll be about. 800 hours . Well, and then they put you on a board and then you're like, I guess I'll look at the iPhones that I already owned. Like, you know, What do you, what do you do inside? Like they're bare bones stores basically at this point. I don't know why they exist. Oh, now I know why they exist. It's to set up Eems. [00:29:29] Frank: You know what you do? You look at the Galaxy Flip V, Is that what it's called? Yes. That is a good looking phone. And I'm just staring at it the entire time. Like, maybe, maybe, but no, I, I, I like it clam shell design, foldy screen. Very nice phone. So I just stared at that while they were fusing around or whatever they do while they're not helping you . Okay. So it, it, it's all fine. I actually had a really wonderful clerk. Uh, this is where I wanted to say the store staff was great except for one. I go to do this transfer, I tell him, Hey, hey, transfer's not working. He's like, Uh, we just gotta wait 10 minutes for the computer to reboot cuz they're having computer problems. So we wait 10 minutes for the computer to reboot. And then he says, Look, I, I wanna do this for you, but you're not authorized to make changes on your account. [00:30:19] James: Oh, that's great. Are you on, are you on family plans still? Cause I've had this issue on family plans where I had to like, call my mom and then they had to be on the phone with her and I was just like, I'm just trying to get a new phone. I'm, I'm 27. Yeah. . [00:30:35] Frank: I mean, I'm just smiling at this point because all I'm thinking is I can't wait to tell this story to James on the podcast at this point, , um, I have a business. At T-Mobile I paid for through the business. Mm-hmm. , Uhhuh, . And um, and yet I do abuse it a little bit. I'm glad. Absolutely. No one listens to the show. Hi everyone. . Oh wow. And, uh, my father is a part of my business and participates in the phone program as a part of my business and. He likes to play with websites and somehow he was the only authorized person on the account that I own and administer and that my company pays for. So aren't databases wonderful. [00:31:18] James: Absolutely delicious. I love a good database. In fact, it'd be great if Apple would back up the entire high message database when I asked them to, to back up that database . [00:31:29] Frank: So the poor clerk has to go in the back to, to check out the old computer system. And I guess in the old computer system, my name is there somewhere. Oh, geez. I know. And he comes out all like, Well, I guess I'm doing you a favor. I'm like, I guess . I, I guess just wanted to. 1200 hour phone. [00:31:48] James: Thank, Thank you, [00:31:53] Frank: That is, it's all smiles. So, uh, wonderful chat. Gets it done. Phone's working and of story. Wasn't that fun. That was my upgrade. Oh, and I should say a day later, um, the watch is like, Hey, I see you're using a new phone. Do you wanna pair? And that actually worked, James. Oh, okay. One thing actually worked. The watch repaired itself. That's good. That's good. [00:32:15] James: That's nice. Uh, cause you weren't on any bes of the Apple Watch, Right? You're just on normal. You know, [00:32:22] Frank: the little guy kept trying to upgrade and kept failing the upgrade . So fortunately there was a bug in that install that saved me from that problem . [00:32:31] James: Oh geez. Oh my goodness. Oh, that's great. This is a great story because it is probably real. I'm, I'm very fascinated. Our listeners are tuning in right now. How many of you. Or having this experience or know someone's having this experience? Or is it just Frank because , you know, it will be, it'll be several weeks before we are able to set this up cause we just got a bunch of shenanigans going on. So probably three weeks from now, probably by on the 31st I'll have an update, I think. But I did just look at the MI mobile. Setup. Mm-hmm. . And I think the EIM will be okay because, well, one Mint Mobile doesn't have any stores, so I can't just go to a store . But, um, I have talked to them online. They're very nice. Uh, because, you know, even when I was transferring from T-Mobile to Mint Mobile, I was terrified. Like, I think I talked about that on a Patreon, uh, podcast. Like I was the most, I was like so terrifying. Like I just, I've done it before. Like I switched from Verizon to T-Mobile, also equally terrifying. And then I think it was more terrifying switching. T-Mobile to MIT Mobile because when I did it from Verizon, I had to call Verizon. I did like a special pin, a special thing, and then like when I went from T-Mobile, there was like, Yeah, I don't even care. Like whatever. Just there's like, mm-hmm. , It's already unlocked. It's already, I'm like, What? Why is it already unlocked? Like, don't, what, what are you doing? T-Mobile, Don't do that. Ah. Um, and as far as I can remember, it was a, it was an, it was a nightmare, but. Like mid mobile just runs on top of T-Mobile. So like, I don't know how any of this shenanigans works in general, but now you got your new iPhone, you got four, you got 5g, gs, you got fifth. The fifth generation [00:33:59] Frank: Gs. Oh, do I? I don't even pay attention to that. I guess I can. You got it. It's on the phone. More importantly, I have the dynamic island constantly distracting me so I can go look at. [00:34:11] James: All right. Initial impressions of the phone then we'll get outta here is, do you love it? Hate it. Let's break down. First thing, cameras. Oh, the [00:34:21] Frank: camera's gorgeous. I was taking shots like in the dark, like things I couldn't see with my eyeballs. Mm-hmm. and it was pulling definition and color out of that shot. So, Amazing camera. Absolutely no complaints. It's even a little bit funny. You take a picture and you can, like, they show you intermediate processing steps. You can see it improving a little bit over time. That part's great. [00:34:42] James: That's cool. Okay. Camera bump. [00:34:45] Frank: It's the worst thing ever. You know what, , I just hope that AI networks get good enough that we can put tiny cameras back on these and still get these high quality shots because this camera bump is ridiculous. I can't, It's gonna have like a whole dent in all my jeans. [00:35:01] James: Well true. All right. Um, did you buy a case or no case? [00:35:06] Frank: I am gonna try cases, but not so much a case. What I'm looking to do is replace my wallet with a little meg safety thing to go on the phone that normally [00:35:17] James: both of 'em at the same time. Right. That's [00:35:19] Frank: the goal. . Well, um, I normally, I'm a staunch, no caser. Mm-hmm. , and I prefer the phone without a case, and yet I'm just really tired of wallets and such. And so I'm gonna join the old man club and get all, get all the attachments I can to the phone. The problem is, it's really hard to select which ones of those on atp. Marco Ding, uh, has been talking about a few. So I've been listening to that. So hard, hard to choose. Accessories. I'm not an accessory person. That makes sense. I love the screen. The screen is gorgeous. Uh, I don't know what, I don't know what to say. App always makes gorgeous screens, but it's gorgeous. [00:35:58] James: Yeah. And this one has the different BES as well. The other ones were, Yeah, these ones are more metal compared to like the rounded ones. I [00:36:07] Frank: nearly forgot one of the. More punchline parts of the early part of the story. So through all that time of going through all those setup screens, mm-hmm. , the phone is in some weird initial factory state where the brightness of the screen is turned all the way down. Oh. And you can't bring up control panel during the setup process. Oh no. So for the entire setup process, I can barely read the text on the screen just to make it, especially, you know, perfect chef's kiss experience. I love it. I love it. Yeah. [00:36:40] James: Um, Dynamic island, what do you think? I hear people hate it. I hear people are like, this is the worst thing in the world. [00:36:47] Frank: I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Like I don't, I find it distracting because it does sit there, you know, it turns out the notch was distracting because it was a bump on the edge. This is distracting because it's, it is an island, It's, it's noticeably an island, especially if you're watching videos and things like that. Um, at the same time, I don't mind it. Uh, my biggest complaint with it is I'm an old school iOS person. I always top, uh, tap the navigation bar to scroll to the top of things. Do you do that? [00:37:16] James: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Top and bottom. Yep. [00:37:18] Frank: Yeah. Uh, that's exactly where the Dynamic Island is now. . Yeah. And if you tap the dynamic island, it opens up whatever activity is happening in the island at the time, which is for my phone, usually playing some music or a podcast or something. So that, That's super [00:37:34] James: annoying. I heard that. You can turn it off. Oh, the tap? No, the Dynamic Island itself. Oh, [00:37:41] Frank: is that right? I don't think I would go. I mean, it's. I, I, uh, I stick with my words of I appreciate the software trying to cover up the failures of the hardware. Um, I, no, I, I wouldn't ever turn it off. Because otherwise it would feel especially dumb. I do kind of wanna write some apps that take place entirely in the space between the dynamic island and the top of the phone. Like I think of like a fun little breakout game that's just played in those top 10 pixels would be kind of hilarious. Uh, it, it's a little bit silly to be thoroughly honest. I think they should go back to a notch. We'll see how it plays. Yeah, I'm interested. [00:38:21] James: It looks like maybe you can't turn it off, but you can turn off like animations or something weird. I don't know. [00:38:27] Frank: Of all the things in ILA 16 that bothers me, at least , What I really don't like about ILA 16, and this is not the phone's fault, but the little three dots at the bottom of the screen when you like, uh, swipe between home screens. Mm. It switches to a search. and there's just something about the animation that is so distracting for me. My eyes are always drawn to the animation and it's a part of the phone that should be completely, you should be ignoring it the majority of the time. And I find it, I find that little search animation to be far more distracting than the dynamic island. Hilariously Interesting. [00:39:08] James: Yeah. It's, it's, it is really. You know, pre curious because the animations are this really beautiful thing and stuff, but they're also distracting. They're, they're, they're, they're animations. Like, they're literally meant to catch your eye, not to vanish into nothing. So the, the problem that they might be running into is, are over animating everything. Yeah. To make it take advantage of hardware. Um, anyways, give it a score. You gotta give it a score of Frank. You gotta give it a score. Out of 10, 10 being the best phone you've ever had in your entire life, what do you got? [00:39:37] Frank: Give it a nine. You get a nine. iPhone 14, Pro, you're [00:39:41] James: at nine. Setup process. Zero at 10. 10 Be best. Okay, Now everyone, if you're listening, I appreciate all of you and definitely write in, let us know what you think. Um, I, I will report back how Heathers goes. So, um, I, [00:39:58] Frank: he, he, my advice stay away from betas trust in the I co. [00:40:04] James: Uh, yeah, I'm a little, Yeah. We'll see what happens. Yeah. I guess I need to turn off the betas on my [00:40:11] Frank: phone. Yeah. Until 16, one is actually released. Yeah. I don't think we [00:40:17] James: on that. Yeah. Yeah. Upgrade a 16 one and then lock it in. Yeah, I'll do that. Yeah. Anything else, Frank? Is that it? [00:40:24] Frank: Uh, no. Thank you for letting me vent for 30 hour, 30 hours here. I felt like 30 hours. Uh, honestly, the only thing that got me through it was thinking I can't wait to tell this story to chance because it was otherwise incredibly painful. , [00:40:37] James: I love it. I'm about it. Um, super interest. See how it goes to everyone else. And, uh, Yeah, let us know, Frank. Well, good luck with your new phone. I can't wait to see some of the amazing photos that you're taking with him. Feel free to share 'em on IMEs of them. Maybe there's no history left at all, so . All right, everyone. Well, that's gonna do it for this week's merge conflict. Hope that you enjoyed it. Hope that you're enjoying your new phones. If you, you haven't, uh, gotten one yet, it's okay. I'm still rocking my iPhone se. Two and I'm soon gonna get an iPhone 11 Pro. Super excited about it, Um, that's gonna do for this week's emerge conflict. So until next time when I'll be on the road, I'm James Monte Magno. [00:41:11] Frank: And I'm Frank Kruger. Thanks for listening. Peace.