Celebrities really are like us, especially when it comes to technology.
Captain America stars Chris Evans said the silent parts out loud (opens in new tab) this week as he lamented why his seven-year-old iPhone 6S didn’t keep working.
Instead of praising his powerful new iPhone 13 Pro, Evans, who is starring in the new Netflix movie The Gray Man, told Collider that his new phone is too heavy and that he missed the home button.
Never has a movie star been more relatable. He’s saying all the things my wife and friends have told me as I let them know it’s probably time to update their current device. And while no one calls Evans a tech expert, he does bring up some interesting and hard truths about current smartphone trends.
Is the iPhone 13 Pro heavier than the iPhone 6S? At 7.19 ounces, the former is 2.15 ounces heavier than the latter. Considering the iPhone 13 Pro looks nothing like the 6S – it has a bigger screen, battery, more and bigger cameras – this is all understandable.
I was a little pleased with Evans’ description of the strain his new iPhone puts on his little finger…his superhero little finger. I know. Evans is not Captain America. He’s just an actor, but if you’ve seen the backstage scenes (opens in new tab) from that iconic one-armed helicopter capture scene from Captain America: Civil War, so you know he’s not weak either. In the interview, her Gray Man co-star Ana de Armas complains about a mark that her iPhone leaves on her smartphone support pinky finger.
why Evans give up your beloved iPhone 6S (opens in new tab) if he didn’t want the extra weight, it looked uninteresting in the new features he could get from an iPhone 13 Pro (those cameras!) and still pining for the lost home button? Maybe it was because the thing was barely holding a load or…
Maybe we can blame iOS 16.
While Apple’s next mobile OS is months away from full release, it’s already in public beta and there’s very important news related to Chris Evans about the update: iOS 16 will not support the iPhone 6S. In fact, the rather elegant update won’t support any iPhone older than an iPhone 8.
This means that in addition to the iPhone 8, 8Plus and the now classic iPhone SE, Apple will no longer support most iPhones in the iPhone 6s design. This is Apple taking its first big step away from the home button that Evans loved. Even though we have a new iPhone SE (2022 edition), the writing is on the wall. There probably won’t be another one in this design or with a physical home button.
Evans’ wish: “I want something that used to work until it doesn’t work anymore” is common and seems fair. Certainly other product categories – from cars to vacuums to mattresses – work this way. A 1930s car is just as likely to run today as it did a century ago, if the engine is still running and you can afford the gas. No one is redesigning bed frames so your old mattress won’t fit.
Can super-serum your way out of change
The technology is different, however. Its history of obsolete old products and even entire categories is as long as it is painful. There is never any guarantee that the product you love this year will be supported by third-party software, adapters, or even the company that made it next year. Time and technology advance and they expect you to walk in sync with them.
However, here’s someone who clearly can afford annual gadget upgrades, and yet he’s kept his aging iPhone 6S for over half a dozen years. It worked for him. He clearly loved it, and couldn’t stop losing him in the morning.
Chris Evans is not wrong. Maybe it’s time for the technology to be supported as long as it can reasonably function. So what if the iPhone 6s doesn’t support the latest OS? If it’s still working, that should be enough.
To be fair, Apple doesn’t remotely turn off old iPhones when they no longer support the current operating system, but over time, they feel more and more like an ostracized relative, sitting out of more and more activities, until, like the classic iPhone 3GS, they can’t even access the Internet.
Evans may have had another year or more with his iPhone 6s, though I’m pretty sure he needed a new battery – if he could still afford it. The climax of his gadget hero movie, however, was always preordained: someone would eventually snap their fingers and that iPhone 6S and its beloved home button would disappear.
Image credit: Composite Shutterstock and Ryan Li (Captain America | Captain America’s photo in Hong Kong. … | flickr)