I'm open to buying the iPhone 8, especially if there ends up being a dark mode in iOS. OLED significantly helps with battery life as long as the UI uses darker colors (e.g. white text on a dark gray/black background).
Originally Posted by
livebetter_travelmore
I'll take a wait-and-see. I'm particularly interested in seeing how the home-button rumors work out. If in fact Apple was unsuccessful implementing touch-id under the glass and the other rumor plays out -- i.e. facial recognition -- then I'll definitely hold out. I'm very happy with touch-id and Apple Pay. Though there are relatively few places in the US with terminals that accept Apple Pay, I've used it lots in other countries and don't want to lose that feature.
I generally double-tap on the Home button instead of relying on the phone to detect the NFC field; it was a lot faster with my old iPhone 6 in my experience. (However, there might not be much difference with the 6s and above.) I mention this because facial recognition might not be a huge issue if NFC is set to turn on whenever the phone is unlocked, which is what Android Pay seems to do. Of course, facial recognition still needs to unlock the phone reliably.
Originally Posted by
CPRich
2 million Feb 2016, 4 million and 35% of all retailers as of Dec 2016, I'd project to 5-6M and nearly 50% today - what do you consider "relatively few"?
I use it all the time, everywhere. The slowdown and uncertainty around EMV certainly helped adoption.
50% in theory, but how are those places distributed and can one actually use it at all of those places? In my experience a lot of major stores don't train their employees all that well, don't even mention NFC capability on the screen (despite being enabled) and/or make terminals difficult to impossible for customers to access. Realistically it's probably less than 50% considering all that, but it has gotten better.
Originally Posted by
livebetter_travelmore
In the US, virtually no restaurants -- I've only seen one exception -- provide handheld terminals to use Apple Pay (or any credit card) at the table unlike many other countries.
Restaurants in general are really reluctant to spend money unless they absolutely have to. Low usage of contactless payment + chip and signature + potential (and possibly actual) backlash from customers due to bringing the terminal to the table == keeping things the way they are. More likely what'll happen is restaurants will start letting people pay their bills via mobile apps instead, which accomplishes much the same thing but without requiring nearly the investment that replacing terminals requires.
That said, California Pizza Kitchen and Denny's will let you use Apple Pay but you'll have to pay at the counter.