I wasn’t really having any problems with my iPhone 12 Pro Max, but when checking the pre-order price for a Apple’s newest phone from AT&T it turned out that I could get an iPhone 15 Plus for just $100 after trading in my current device. I have never really been happy with the camera in my current Pro Max so I decided it wasn’t worth the additional $300 to get a Pro Max this time. It was a last-minute decision on my part but even though it wasn’t until around 11am when I logged in I had no issue placing a pre-order for a black 128gb device. A week later on September 22, my new device arrived.

I was flying out of town Saturday morning, so I almost waited until I got back to unbox and set up the new phone, but the gadget freak inside of me just couldn’t resist the new shiny. I made a final iCloud and iTunes backup of my 12 Pro Max and then started the out-of-box setup on the 15 Plus. This involved first a forced upgrade to iOS 17.0.1 (due to some activation issues), restoring the iCloud backup, and then syncing with iTunes (via the new USB-C cable!) to re-load all my music (yes, I still actually store my music on my phone!).

While that process was going on, I installed my traditional accessories: the amFilm glass screen protector and a Spigen MagArmor slim case. The amFilm box also included a camera protector to go over the lenses. I’ve installed that for now but need to see if it has any impact on photo quality. I also picked up a few new USB-C cables for charging now that I don’t have a Lightning port anymore.

Overall the transfer process was smooth (as usual) and eventually I had the old and new devices side-by-side (with the 12 Pro Max in airplan mode) to finish the setup. Man, I had forgotten what a pain it is to have to re-login to everything. The first problem I had was transferring my Microsoft Authenticator app settings so I could get the 2-factor codes for my work e-mail (no problems with Bitwarden/Vaultwarden) but after that it was pretty much just a matter of launching every app and authenticating again. Ugh.

Next I had an problem with my Apple Watch. I had upgraded my 12 Pro Max to iOS 17 and my watch to watchOS 10 earlier in the week to get a head start on using the new versions and also to hopefully make the transfer to the new phone smoother. But after setting up the new phone it needed to be paired with the watch. Something went wrong with the setup because my watch ended up stuck during the pairing/restore process. I had to set it up as “new” in the Watch app on the phone which somehow caused duplicated watch faces that I had to manually delete. I’ve had other issues with watchOS 10 like WiFi disconnects and poor battery life (which seemed to get better after a few days) and am still getting used to its new features like widgets, button/crown changes, and other UI differences (not a fan of the new, bright “good morning” screen when waking up).

One other minor issue: with iOS 17, Apple seemingly removed custom tone support for things like text messages, calendar alerts, etc. My existing custom tones were transferred across, but I accidentally “touched” the Text Tone one which set it to the default and then I couldn’t set it back. The new default tone is way too quiet for my liking but supposedly custom tones are making a comeback in iOS 17.1.

After all of that I ended up taking both phones with me on my weekend trip but actually never needed to refer to my old 12 Pro Max (with one exception, more on that below), so I’d call that a successful transition.

Compared to the 12 Pro Max, the Plus has the same large (6.7″) form-factor I’m used to (and now that I find myself wearing my reading glasses more and more, that’s important) with better cameras (48MP vs. 12MP just without the 2.5x optical telephoto lens), USB-C port (which can be used to charge other devices!), and of course a newer CPU with better battery life. The screen also replaces the “notch” in favor of the “dynamic island.” From a camera perspective, I’m happy I chose the Plus as I still prefer my trusty Canon PowerShot SX740 HS with its 40x optical zoom when I need to take “real” photos. But the camera in the Plus is “good enough” for “because I have it with me” use. Other than the file size and max digital zoom, I don’t see a huge difference like I did going from the iPhone 7 to the 12 Pro Max.

Time for a new e-reader

The one exception to my smooth transition that I referred to above was my e-book reader. I switched to Marvin 3 back in 2016 and have not had any problems with it. Well, apparently it was removed from the App Store when Apple purged “abandoned” apps from its online store last year. There’s an important lesson here about iCloud backups: the apps themselves are not included. They’re just stubs and the app itself is re-downloaded from the App Store during the restore process. As a result, Marvin couldn’t be installed on my new iPhone 15 Plus! I still had it on my 12 Pro Max so after a little research I was able to transfer the app from my old phone to the new one using iMazing. Unfortunately, I had made in-app purchases in Marvin (to remove ads) and could not restore those purchases since the app didn’t exist in the App Store! This resulted in a sub-optimal reading experience with a big nag window at the bottom of the reader. I tried reaching out to Appstafarian’s e-mail address listed on the site, but never heard anything back so …

This prompted me to start looking for a new e-reader app with my main criteria being OPDS support (to connect to my Calibre library) and a good reading experience. I started out with three: PocketBook Reader, KyBook 3, and BookFusion. I installed all three, loaded my current book, and did some reading (1 chapter in each app). I eliminated PocketBook Reader almost immediately: there’s no OPDS support, you can’t hide the iOS status bar in the reader, the page turns are slow, and it didn’t have a lot of customization options. KyBook3 seemed like a perfect replacement. It has built-in OPDS support and a good full-screen reader experience (with lots of options for spacing, formatting, etc.) but requires an in-app purchase to remove the “upgrade to PRO and disable Ads!” message at the bottom (and the ads I’ve seen are reader-interrupting full-screen video ads). The Pro upgrade is $5 and there are subscription options for a “premium” mode (nothing I’m interested in). I’d gladly pay $5 for this app, but further investigation shows that it hasn’t been updated in 4 years … just slightly sooner than Marvin. I tried contacting the developer … nothing. I don’t really want to replace one abandoned e-reader with another, so that left BookFusion.

BookFusion at least is an actively updated app (1.30.2 was released a few days ago) and has a full-screen reader experience comparable to KyBook 3. My minor nits with it are that in scrolling mode the text scrolls around and above the dynamic island (which is distracting when using a white page color) and in page mode the tap target areas on the right and left side for page turns seem to be too small for me (so I end up with a “center” tap that brings up the options screen instead of advancing the page). I can deal with those but BookFusion also has no OPDS support. They do have a plug-in for Calibre integration but what that does is pull your e-books out of Calibre into their online service (which requires an account). They have several pricing plans and again, I’m not adverse to paying for a good e-reader app but I don’t need a subscription. I’m a casual reader, I don’t need these extra like annotations, highlighting, synchronization, etc. I just want to be able to download my books to my phone and read them. The free tier lets you store up to 10 books in their service but once you hit 10 you have to delete and then can only upload 2 new books a month. Those limits are workable for me (I’m not typically reading more than two books a month) but don’t want to store my library in someone else’s cloud … I already have them in Calibre. If BookFusion would add OPDS support, I’d be willing to pay (even if it was a subscription) but posts in their sub-reddit seem to indicate they have no interest in OPDS since they already “support” Calibre via their plug-in and just tell OPDS-seekers that maybe BookFusion isn’t for them. 🙁

For the past few weeks I’ve been switching back and forth between KyBook 3 and BookFusion. They’re both fine (neither has Goodreads integration or easy screen brightness controls in the reader by just swiping like Marvin did), I just wish there was a clear winner.