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).

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.

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.

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.

The problem I have with Apple Pay is that there's no easy way to determine if a store accepts it. Sometimes they have the wifi looking symbol and don't take it. Having to memorize the names of stores that accept it or asking the cashier kind of defeats the purpose (and the cashiers don't know sometimes.)

I'm planning to get the iPhone 8. I'm not thrilled at the idea of losing Touch ID but one of the mics is failing on my 6S+ so I'm not sure if I could get another year out of it.

An OLED screen on the next iPhone would be as monumental an upgrade as the Retina screen on the iPhone 4.

Chances are this same woman wouldn't have had her Oyster card ready either.

I seriously do not understand peoples' annoyance at people who hold up the lines. Being annoyed will not make the lines move faster and is counterproductive to one's own mood.

What will make the lines move faster are solutions as implemented in places like NYC and Seattle -- where riders scan their transit cards at the bus stop, before the bus arrives.

It's only on select routes at least in NYC.

But what happens when people run towards the bus while the driver waits even longer?! ;)

Agreed. Traveling since it is based on a que and gate check concept can be slowed when people are not prepared for TSA or to pay when they are in a line when payment is expected for a bus or any other item. I take advantage of every opportunity to shorten my wait.

I'm not sure about that. Apple seems to prioritize color accuracy over vividness, so things might not look much different if/when they adopt that technology. The main difference will be battery life, but even then that'll depend on whether iOS continues to keep a lot of its lighter-colored UI.

That's always possible and as I say I've nothing against the technology. Although another woman just waved her bag in front of the reader and the Oyster card was read from inside.

My annoyance was because we'd been waiting for the bus for ages and the delay caused us to miss the lights. These lights are at a crossroads and missing them adds at least two minutes to your journey, more if there are vehicles in front. I wouldn't have been quite so annoyed if I wasn't running late for work already through no fault of my own.

They don't take cash anymore on London buses which has speeded things up.