Is An iPhone 6 Still Good In 2020? Here’s What It’s Like To Use

It’s 2020 now, and the iPhone 6 will be 6 years old this year, which is a dinosaur in tech terms. There’s been 6 upgrades since 2014, including the latest which is the iPhone 11 or 11 Pro, depending on what you get.

So the question is: Is an iPhone 6 still good in 2020?

Well I still have one, and in fact I use it. So the answer is yes, it’s perfectly good to use for day to day usage.

Here’s what it’s like to use, and why I haven’t bothered to upgrade.

First of all, I think I have to go into my original plan for my phone. The iPhone 6 was the first one I bought sim free, on the day of release. It was £699 (128GB model), and I decided that after having 3 iPhone contracts, I would go sim free, pay up front & get a sim only deal.

I worked out that if I keep the phone for 2 years (or more) it would be cheaper in the long run. I didn’t want to be locked into a deal, back then you wouldn’t get much for less than £45/month and the contracts were 18-24 months (which sounds cheap by these days standard, then, not so much!).

When it comes to tech, that’s an age, and what happens if I did fancy an upgrade? I’d be stuck in that contract. Not the biggest deal in the world, but sim free gave me options, should I wanted to use them.

Fast forward a few years and I was happy with my phone. I was always going to skip the iPhone 7, so the 8 was my upgrade. But that didn’t happen. My 6 was perfectly fine, and the 8 wasn’t much of an upgrade in my opinion.

So I said, “I’ll get the next one, next year”…

Then came the iPhone X. A phone which cost £1000!

Is it a good phone? Sure. Is it worth £1000? Not for me. It had a good camera, improved performance specs which is natural, but everything else was a bit of a gimmick.

It came with Animoji (is that still a thing?) which was marketed quite a bit. It seemed incredibly novelty and like a gimmick at the time, and it still does 2 years later. Have I ever thought “I wish I had that” – No.

So once again, I said…”I’ll get the next one, definitely this time”.

The Iphone XS and XR came, and the same thing happened. Not much of an upgrade, no thanks.

This year the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro came, and yes…You guessed it, I passed yet again.

So you might be thinking, why haven’t you upgraded? Don’t you like technology? I LOVE technology. But why upgrade?

Using An iPhone 6 in 2019

The first thing I will say is that in 2019 it’s the first year that iOS is no longer supported. I have iOS 12, and that’s it. The phone is officially old, if it wasn’t already. Is that a problem? No, and it shouldn’t be for a long time.

There’s some new apps which I’ve noticed in the app store that don’t support anything less than iOS 13, but at the moment that’s minimal. The apps I use from big companies still work, and work with no issues.

I use all the social media apps – Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger, along with plenty of other apps, and they all work fine. All of the Apple apps, such as Calendar work fine too.

There will probably come a time when this isn’t the case, but for now, iOS 12 is fine.

Virtually all apps load and run fine, they may be slower than the newer phones, but this is old technology, and that’s to be expected. It’s certainly not the case that it’s noticeably slower, although if you came from a new phone to old, you’d probably notice the difference. (This is usually the case when going backwards with most technology)

The Battery

I have to say, my battery was slowly dying around 2018, and I did have it replaced by Apple when they were doing the offer of £30 battery replacements around March 2018. It was usable, but noticeable that the battery drained faster.

After the battery replacement, it’s been working like new, and according to the battery health, it’s at 100%.

I think this has definitely extended my use of the iPhone 6, so if just need a new battery, I can recommend it.

What the iPhone 6 is “Missing”

The newer phones have a couple of things the iPhone 6 is missing. These include things like: Face ID/Unlock, better screen, glass back, wireless charging and being waterproof. Things I don’t care about in the slightest.

Newer models have better performance which is to be expected, i.e. CPU, Graphics and Memory. But they also lack a home button and 3.5mm headphone jack, things I like.

The newer models also have a glass back. I have seen so many of these damaged, and if I am spending £800, I will be terrified of it breaking.

The Size

Then there’s the issue of the size. The current standard phone, the iPhone 11, is huge and has a 6″ screen. The Pro is smaller, but costs more. The iPhone 6 has a 4.7″ screen, and I like this size.

The phone fits in my pocket nicely, and a phone which is a lot bigger would be a struggle.

What does the future hold

Why upgrade?

Why spend £800+ on a new phone?

That’s the question I have asked myself several times. Sure, it’s cool, there’s no doubt the newer devices are better. But when the novelty factor of having a shiny new phone wears off, you’re left with a device that does virtually the same as what you had.

The technology has kind of reached a bottleneck. There’s no big reason to upgrade, the biggest being that the cameras are a lot better. However, for me, this is not a problem.

Most people use their camera phone and it’s their only camera. Since I have this blog, I have a nice DSLR camera, which is always going to be better than a phone camera. So I understand people upgrading for the camera, but I don’t even need to do that.

There’s rumours of a newer, smaller iPhone in 2020, and hopefully that will be true. Or maybe I will get an Android phone, and make the big jump.

Either way, I will eventually upgrade.

But in 2019, an iPhone 6 still works well. I wouldn’t recommend buying one (it would be hard to even find one), but it’s still perfectly usable in 2019 and 2020.

Check out my iPhone SE Review