In the final months of 2023, I made one of my most controversial decisions.
More than four years had elapsed since I'd last upgraded my phone; the battery life had already begun its slow descent into either planned or technologically inevitable obsolescence. I'd reached the point in life where purchasing a new phone was more of a chore than anything else. And besides, I loved my then-current phone, the iPhone 12 mini. I'd seen enough of the newer iPhones to know that they'd all pose challenges not just for my pockets, but for my hands. I'd recently discovered that contrary to popular belief, I'm not what anyone would describe as tall. My hands are proportional to my 64-inch frame; the webbed skin between my forefinger and thumb stretched, unfamiliar and unpleasant, whenever I had the misfortune of using someone else's Big Phone. With my iPhone 12 mini I could text one-handed, at a speed only previously achieved in the days of T9.
Still, I was far too directionally challenged for my primary navigational tool to be constantly on the verge of dying. For reasons I could only describe as sentimental, my phone-buying decisions now only came under pressure. Who amongst us doesn't have attachment issues? My last phone upgrade was precipitated by my speaker crapping out so completely that I could only take calls using the headphones. Even then, it wasn't until I lost an interview recording that I finally forced myself to walk into an AT&T store.
This time, I wasn't going to be taken by surprise. I would force my own hand. If my phone broke, I reasoned, then I'd have no other option than to get a new one. The water-resistance of the new generation of iPhones meant I couldn't count on the speakers to ever stop working, so somewhere between October and December of 2023, I made what I soon found out is one of the most polarizing choices one can make in modern society.
At first, I took the case off my phone to clean it. The clear protective plastic gets far scummier with pocket lint and sweat than anyone really ever acknowledges. But as I waited for the case to dry, I was struck by how nice my naked phone felt in my hand, the metal cool and then warm against my fingers. I left the case off for a day, and then another. Aghast, friends asked what game I was playing. Famously, my family often describes me as grace-challenged. I offered my rationale: I needed a new phone and when this one inevitably broke, I'd finally be forced to upgrade.
A month passed, and then two. I soon discovered that phones made in this decade are far sturdier than the ones I was first introduced to as a barely pubescent teen, whose screens would crack if you looked at them the wrong way. I dropped my phone, often and repeatedly, on hardwood floors and subway platforms, in grocery stores and at the gym. The greatest damage done in that time was a single chip on the lefthand side of my phone screen that I'd soon find myself absentmindedly running my thumb over in quiet moments. I can't recall exactly what tumble caused the chip; it seemed to appear overnight like a new age spot. Four months quietly turned into six. I continued to face scrutiny. By then I came to relish the reaction my caseless phone received, the ways people would gather and look, as if I had the last remaining chimera living in my pocket. Millennials were universally horrified; zoomers looked at me with something like respect. I wondered what the purpose of all this user-friendly design was if the unencumbered sight of it caused so much anxiety.
By the end of 2024, my phone no longer functioned the way it was intended. I couldn't play music above a certain volume without the sound becoming aggravatingly tinny. Friends would have to help me navigate home when my phone inevitably died after a long night. During the summer, when I was most likely to be out in the streets, I carried around a portable charger. Winter offered its own problems. If the temperature dropped below 30 degrees, my battery could dwindle from 70 percent to 15 in less than 10 minutes. I learned to adapt. If I wanted photographic evidence of an event, a concert or museum visit or party, I gathered it as close to arrival as possible and then left my phone on "do not disturb" in a quiet location. If I was lucky, I'd have enough battery to use my Bluetooth headphones on the train ride home or snap a blurry photo of the moon. Sometimes I wasn't lucky, and my only soundtrack was that of the city around me, a riotous bloom of cherry blossom trees recorded only in my memory.
It was true that I needed a new phone. That had been the case for a while, but now everything was becoming more urgent. Still, over a year after I'd released it from its protective plastic encasement, the one in my hands still looked pristine. I began to get cocky. If I dropped my phone, I no longer inspected it for scratches or cracks.
Early last week, when my phone fell off the side of the sink onto the tile floor of my bathroom as it had dozens of time before, I didn't even really look at it as I picked it up. Only when a splinter of glass slid neatly into my finger did I realize my luck had finally run out. For a long moment I stared at the drop of blood beading on my skin, dumbstruck and a little betrayed. "As I searched for tweezers my only thought was, Now? The fall wasn't even that far! The tile, that wood-look porcelain that landlords love, wasn't even that hard. None of that mattered. The metallic structure undergirding perhaps the most important device in my life was now visible to me. The sight of it was thrilling and instantly wrong; I was reminded of the first and last time I'd needed stitches and encountered the flesh I instinctively knew was present but had never seen before.
My phone was now an active hazard. Every text sent was another opportunity to draw blood. For one blissful week when the temperatures in New York were too cold to hazard going outside for anything but the most essential tasks, I lived largely without a phone. I answered texts sporadically. I broke my TikTok addiction. I considered getting a flip phone. Instead, this past Saturday, I made my way to the AT&T store on Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy. I walked in with no plan other than getting the cheapest and smallest iPhone. I walked out with what I'm told is a iPhone 15 Pro Max. My worst fears, nursed over nearly 18 months, have come true. My phone is Too Big.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 6.7-inch screen (diagonally) and three separate camera eyes on the back. If I charge it in the middle of the day, the battery lasts through the night and into the next afternoon. It fits in none of my pockets and I have to use both my hands to text. If my phone is in my right hand, as it often is, my thumb has no hope of reaching the lefthand side of the screen without cramping. My phone now completely occupies the hand holding it; I can no longer balance it alongside a cup of coffee or a few pieces of mail or my wallet. It's more of a tablet than anything else. For the first 48 hours I owned it, I tapped at the screen like Beyoncé in a 2009 Nintendo DS commercial.
Scrolling is disorientating. There's been some sort of advance in screen technology that's reminiscent of motion smoothing on televisions. Only in the last 24 hours has it stopped distracting me. I've yet to open TikTok on this phone; I'm scared of what I'll see, now bigger and clearer than ever before. In the four days that I've had this phone, I've lamented to my friends multiple times: Look at how big it is. I've held it up on Zoom calls, insisting It's bigger than my face.
My old, beautiful phone is still sitting on my kitchen table, silent and dead. Over the past few days, I've caught myself more than once habitually tapping the screen to check the time. I'm not sure when this new phone will begin to feel like my phone instead of some embiggened imposter. I'm not sure if it ever will.
But at least it has a case.
