So I wasn’t planning to get the iPhone5.

In October 2011 my Uncle Michael purchased the iPhone 4s. He was the supreme Mac geek. He was one of those guys. Totally bought into Apple products and always, always, always got the newest thing. Two weeks later he unexpectedly passed away. The phone was barely used when it was handed down to me.

It took me a long time until I could bring myself to set it up. To wipe it clean of his music, his notes, his fingerprint. But … as the grief settled in I knew it was ridiculous of me not to.

I have now used it for eleven months. The camera blows my socks off and I haven’t had to delete any of my photos after importing because of course Uncle Mike bought the 60GB model. (I have over 5,000 photos currently in my camera roll.) I know his ghost isn’t attached to it or anything, I don’t believe in that, but in a way it is a connection to him. A memory of him, and the iPhone5 didn’t jazz me enough to trade in.

Oh, not to mention – I have a phone that is less than a year old. It has a lot of storage space. And in the last two weeks, we have bled out enough cash to take a vacation. Only we had to replace the video card on my iMac, replace the brakes and tires on my car, buy school clothes and school supplies, and repair a major plumbing issue. So, was I going to bleed out another $200 on a phone? Nope.

“But you use it all the time,” my husband said. “We can hand the old phones down to the boys,” he said. “You depend on that camera every single moment of the day! Why wouldn’t you want to upgrade to the best that’s out there?”

“Not really interested,” I told him.

But guess who was? (Interested.) My aforementioned main squeeze. His iPhone4 was slowly giving up, having lived a nice long life in his pocket and on his nightstand. When the iPhone5 arrived Monday I felt nothing except happy for him to play with his new toy. I sent him a text of a photo of the box, but not at all was my materialism piqued.

“The only thing that could possibly sway me would be the camera,” I told him one night we sat in the garage after putting the kids to bed, sharing a beer.

*

This morning I was testing the iOS6 panoramic camera feature on my phone. Then I thought I should test it with his. I am definitely most interested in how the new iPhone5 camera operates under low light conditions. I felt like this room would be a great environment for the test because there are shadows and light in one space.

 

As someone who takes approximately 10,000 photos a year on her “phone”, I am pretty sure the choice has been made. Image quality trumps everything else. For me, that 100% zoom says it all. So much better sharpness and detail. (None of these were sharpened or edited in Photoshop.)

Feel free to make your own judgements. I know everyone has their own opinion about these types of things. But man, wow.
As Kip Dynamite says, “I love technology.”

-Tara

PS : Uncle Michael would TOTALLY support this decision. It feels kind of strange to talk about his death here for the first time in a blog post comparing Apple products. But then again, it doesn’t seem strange at all. xo