jducoeur

Are you using the Google MVNO data plan?

No, although it was tempting. But we got Kate a new iPhone last year, so we still have a year to go on our Verizon contract. Over much discussion, she convinced me that the most sensible course was to stick with Verizon for now and suck up a new two-year contract. At the end of that, she'll probably still be entirely content with her iPhone (so we don't need to upgrade her again next year), and I can consider our options properly at that point.

I hate being beholden to Verizon like this, but once you're *in* the family plan, it gets rather tricky to extricate yourself from it without penalties, at least if you're a gadget-hound like me. This is actually the main reason it took so long to upgrade my phone -- I basically wanted the Nexus 6 the day it came out (this is my third Nexus in a row), but it took a long time to talk myself into re-upping the contract.

I don't want what The Register refers to as a "fondleslab" or "phablet", because I want something I can put in a pocket and still sit down.

It's a reasonable concern -- the thing's bloody enormous -- but so far (on one days' evidence) it isn't causing me a problem. Of course, I mostly wear jeans with capacious pockets. I *am* a bit concerned about the fact that I can't reasonably fit it into a shirt pocket, though; we'll see if that proves a problem in practice...

My N6 fits in most of my shirt pockets. The main exceptions are the ones with button-down flaps; those, there's enough friction to make it hard to get the thing in and out.

It does look a little stupid peeking out, though; and sometimes I worry it'll fall out if I bend over.

It definitely doesn't fit in my jeans pockets. I see myself wearing more slacks this year.

(It's like 1995 all over again: I'm giving up my jeans because my Motorola phone is too big.)

A pocket for your Newton?

<looks shifty> It fit...sort of. And, if I was wearing a jacket, I could carry my Ricochet modem and get the Newton online. That turned out to be less useful that I'd hoped, though, because it took so long to get connected.

http://www.phonearena.com/phones/size#/phones/size/Apple-iPhone-6,Google-Nexus-6,Apple-iPhone-6-Plus/phones/8346,8626,8908

Yup, the same size as a 6+ but with more screen area.

Yeah, the Nexus 6 is kind of ridonkulous considered as a phone. OTOH, since I never make phone calls and have big pockets, thinking of it as a pocket tablet with voice functionality works for me....

Yeah, ditto. The guy in the store was trying *so* hard to get me to buy a headset as an add-on, and I shot him down by pointing out that I rarely make phone calls. For me, it's all about email, IM and web browsing.

(And *man* the onscreen keyboard is sweet on the Nexus 6. Just enough bigger than my Galaxy Nexus that I'm noticeably more accurate, and Lollipop makes some nice tweaks...)

I'm still annoyed that Apple has gone with the 'bigger is better' mantra with the iPhone 6 that the rest of the cellphone world picked up. I want my phone to remain pocketable. But the dirty truth is that people don't really want bigger phones so much as they want phones that have better battery time, and bigger phones means bigger batteries.

Footnote: Of course there are those who want a large phone instead of both a phone and a tablet. Given that most companies would prefer to sell you two devices instead of one, I don't think that's the demographic driving this phone inflationism.

I should note that, while I'm still deciding whether this has crossed the line into "too big", I *do* like having a very large screen. A lot depends on what you're using the device for, but for someone who is doing lots of reading and typing on it, big is really quite nice.

(And as mentioned above, it *does* fit into my pockets decently well. I wonder if it's a function of how tight one's pants are...)

I have a flip phone for voice and text, and a tablet for if I want to surf when I'm away from my desk. I seem to have reached a life stage where there is nothing that can fit securely in any of my pockets has a big enough display for me to be able to read it unless there just the right light and I have my reading glasses on. I can more or less read phone numbers when I type them in and can use the address book most of the time. If the eyes get worse, I'm not sure what I'll do.

I'd love more battery life on my tablet. I went sort of cheap because it was an experiment; I'll do more research and pry open the wallet a little further next time. :-)