Dear Apple, please bring the iPhone 4s into the future
There's something awful about being in love with an outdated piece of technology, but I will hold onto my iPhone 4s until the day it dies. You may find yourself asking why, but the answer is simple. The iPhone 4s is the best designed phone Apple has ever released. Even as new generations of iOS and iPhones have been released the 4s keeps chugging along, showing its age with each new update but still powering on through waves of abuse from users and Apple alike.
Now there are rumors Apple is going to release a 4" iPhone 6, and if they prove true I have one simple request for Apple. Just put new guts into the body of the iPhone 4s. For the love of god, don't try to make it any thinner.
Sure, I would love to have something thinner, but the major problem with iPhones since the 4s is that they're fragile as hell. I've had my iPhone 4s for three years. During those years I've dropped it countless times on a cornucopia of hard surfaces without ever cracking the front screen. It almost reads like an infomercial: drop it on concrete, hardwood, tile, marble, dirt -- it survives them all. Yes, I finally earned myself a crack this year, but it took years of effort and constant use.
Meanwhile my wife is now on her third 5c, with the screens on her first two each shattering the first time they fell on the ground. I've seen similar problems with the 5, 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. The guts are from the future, but the screen can't survive the war of actual daily use. You can make all the promises you want about futuristic glass, but if you keep making that glass insanely thin it will keep breaking.
Yes, you can use a case but that doesn't protect your phone from everything. Even bulletproof vests have weak points. Even the 4s can be broken if you try hard enough. Apparently, I haven't tried hard enough. As an experiment, I've intentionally never used a case with my 4s. They've always been easy to replace, so I wanted to see what it would take to kill it. Right now I still don't entirely know how to kill this beast through everyday use. Your iPhone 6 may have a super computer brain, but my 4s has a bomb shelter body.
Whether you call it the iPhone 6s mini or the iPhone Classic, please Apple, for the love of all that is good and decent in the world, keep your eyes on the under-appreciated design that still leads your other phones in sales in developing markets. Let the people who want massive thin phones have them, but also make room at your table for those of us who want a small, but hard to kill, beast in our pockets. Give the 4s body another shot at glory, and you'll find me lining up a month in advance. Please Apple, honor your best design. Improve its insides and bring a classic into the future.
