FYI: There will be no posts for the next few days. I am working on a major trend piece for the new decade titled “Looking Back To Look Forward.” I’ll be reviewing trends and culture shifts from the last five years to see what they hint at for the upcoming decade.

Now back to why my new iPhone is the worst

Where do I even start?

I’ve never had an iPhone that is so glitchy and keeps lagging and freezing. Most annoying is that this bad boy of a phone generally works perfectly well every time I complain about it while standing next to my tech guru, Jamie Dwyer! Isn’t that just maddening?

Overall, the worst thing is how SLOW the phone is, e.g., I just went on settings to check my software updates. It took a full 2 minutes of spinning to finally tell me that my software was up to date (pic upper left).

Additionally, my previous iPhone 7 would automatically switch to LTE if wifi was not available. Not so with iPhone 11 – I get messages galore about needing to be on wifi for it to work. And then refusing to let me get on LTE.

Apps are also taking an inordinate amount of time to open. I feel like I’ve gone back 20 years in terms of speed and efficiency.

All the issues (below) are minor when taken individually but in totality, they make for an extremely frustrating experience:

• Slow to open apps
• Butting in on what I’m doing and asking the exact same question over and over, e.g., whether I want Citizen app to use my location (see pic above) even after I’ve “allowed” dozens of times. Shouldn’t it have learned by now?
• Slow to show that an email has been seen, e.g., I’ll click on an email but it will continue to show the email as unread. Even if I delete it, it continues to show as an unread email – for minutes!
• The phone only wants to work with WiFi. It won’t automatically switch to LTE, e.g., on the subway.
• Camera freezes
• Very slow to let me power off
• Sound switches on/off randomly
• Keeps asking for location and GPS is often just plain wrong

Bottom Line.

It’s as though this phone is trying to be my meditation teacher – it wants me to slow way down.

And when it’s not getting me to slow down, it just nags me.

If my phone were a person, I would steer clear.

The only good thing about the phone is the battery. It never runs out and it also recharges phenomenally fast. Beyond that, it’s a glitchy, slow mess. Being an Apple customer is becoming tiresome.

Tim Cook, are you listening? I know you can do better than this.

And that’s it until later this week when I’m back with trends and other predictions for the upcoming decade.