iPhone 12 Pro

[nOOky]

The wife would like a new phone with a better camera. She has an older LG G7 and the camera it has is not very good, especially in low light. I know the new iPhones will be delayed, but we are in no hurry.

I have a few basic questions about iPhones for people that use them, sorry I am so stupid about their abilities. Do you have to have an iTunes account to activate one and use it? Can the phone be plugged into a Windows PC and be able to drag and drop files or transfer images etc. like an Android phone? We are both currently using Google phones so we are tied into that ecosystem I guess. The new Samsung phones just don't look that exciting to be honest, the reviews I have read through about the cameras are kind of hit or miss, although I'm sure the image quality is still way ahead of what she has.

We have time to evaluate and hopefully play with the phone when it comes out, I'm just worried more about the iTunes aspect than learning to use iOS etc.

It looks like the 12 pro 6.1" for her would be the best choice. Any discussion of the 12 is welcome in the thread as it gets closer to the release date.

 

[Commodus]

The wife would like a new phone with a better camera. She has an older LG G7 and the camera it has is not very good, especially in low light. I know the new iPhones will be delayed, but we are in no hurry.

I have a few basic questions about iPhones for people that use them, sorry I am so stupid about their abilities. Do you have to have an iTunes account to activate one and use it? Can the phone be plugged into a Windows PC and be able to drag and drop files or transfer images etc. like an Android phone? We are both currently using Google phones so we are tied into that ecosystem I guess. The new Samsung phones just don't look that exciting to be honest, the reviews I have read through about the cameras are kind of hit or miss, although I'm sure the image quality is still way ahead of what she has.

We have time to evaluate and hopefully play with the phone when it comes out, I'm just worried more about the iTunes aspect than learning to use iOS etc.

It looks like the 12 pro 6.1" for her would be the best choice. Any discussion of the 12 is welcome in the thread as it gets closer to the release date.

You don't absolutely need an Apple ID, but it's clearly helpful if you want to use iCloud (and you might already have one if you've ever shopped on the Apple Store, iTunes, or Apple Music).

You can transfer photos and files, although it's not usually drag-and-drop. The most straightforward method is to use iTunes and tell it to sync photos from a given folder. You can also install iCloud for Windows and have photos sync that way. For general files? Honestly, the easiest way is to use a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive. Thankfully there's a a built-in Files app that lets you manage those from a central location alongside data stored on the iPhone.

You can manually add media through iTunes if you like, too.

And don't forget, many Google apps have iOS equivalents. You can install Google Photos and sync photos both ways; it'll automatically back up photos when you open the app on your iPhone.

While it's too soon to say how the iPhone 12 will behave in real life, the big deal about iPhone cameras is their consistency. You can generally assume you'll take a good photo or video unless the conditions are truly dire (shaky, pitch black, that kind of thing). Even the Pixel line falls short on video.

 

[Midwayman]

The wife would like a new phone with a better camera. She has an older LG G7 and the camera it has is not very good, especially in low light. I know the new iPhones will be delayed, but we are in no hurry.

I have a few basic questions about iPhones for people that use them, sorry I am so stupid about their abilities. Do you have to have an iTunes account to activate one and use it? Can the phone be plugged into a Windows PC and be able to drag and drop files or transfer images etc. like an Android phone? We are both currently using Google phones so we are tied into that ecosystem I guess. The new Samsung phones just don't look that exciting to be honest, the reviews I have read through about the cameras are kind of hit or miss, although I'm sure the image quality is still way ahead of what she has.

We have time to evaluate and hopefully play with the phone when it comes out, I'm just worried more about the iTunes aspect than learning to use iOS etc.

It looks like the 12 pro 6.1" for her would be the best choice. Any discussion of the 12 is welcome in the thread as it gets closer to the release date.

1) You technically can use one without an itunes account, but you'll want one. For instance the app store.
2) You can drag and drop with 3rd party tools. itunes itself can sync pics, etc. The windows 10 photo app can pull photos off it just like a regular camera. If you're hoping to use it like a usb drive for random stuff, that's a little harder. Files generally need to be associated with an application. Dropbox, google drive, etc tends to be the best way to move random stuff onto it.
3)The 11 has a pretty amazing camera. I'm sure the 12 will too.

itunes you can more or less avoid if you want to. coming over to iOS from android is a love/hate thing. I was super frustrated every time I wanted to do something stupid simple like choose which app opens web links or email. (though ios14 is at least partially addressing this I think). If you want to tweak your phone iOS is not the right os. OTOH what it does tends to work well. That more I can say for the androids I used. There was always so much half assed UI and buggy software I had to work around. iOS might leave you wishing it did more, but will rarely leave you frustrated because it doesn't work.

 

[nOOky]

Thanks for the replies, very helpful. I think the iOS might be better for the wife. I typically want more control over what I do so I copy and backup images and stuff off of my phone myself, my wife struggles with stuff like that so just setting Windows and iTunes up to do it initially might be better. We do have an iTunes account already for an iPad she uses for work. I tend to assume my wife will do what I do since she always asks me for technical support, but I think an iPhone might be good for her usage. One knock is we really like to put big memory cards in our phones and leave most of our photos etc. on the phone, and Apple makes you overpay a lot imho for increased internal storage.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I can’t stand iTunes for syncing anything. I haven’t used iTunes for years for anything more than reloading my OS when needed. I rely on OneDrive or Google Drive for syncing up files between devices.

Google Photos also allows me to buy the smallest storage option of iPhone (64GB). All my photo get offloaded to Google Photos keeping my local storage free for apps. But it still get a bit tight at times. I definitely like that Samsung’s base storage is 128GB now (and has a microSD slot).