Chris Evans aka Captain America aka Buzz Lightningbeen doing as much Apple news lately as the rumored iPhone 14. As we all do from time to time, Evans upgraded his old iPhone to a new one. So what is all this hubbub about? Turns out he’s using an iPhone 6S all this time. Last June, in an Instagram post, he shared a RIP for his old iPhone 6S, a phone released during the Obama administration.
Obviously, a celebrity of his stature could afford the latest in phones. The fact that Evans has held on to his iPhone 6S for so long speaks volumes about his character and perspective. I dare say that makes it more down to earth and cooler too.
And if the story ended there, so much the better. But while promoting her new movie The Gray Man on Netflix, Collider’s Steve Weintraub asked him about his old phone and Evans replied, “I miss it.” The Knives Out star admitted he was missing the home button and his new iPhone 12 Pro feels too heavy. Her co-star Ana de Armas, seated next to Evans, chimed in sympathetically and showed how her iPhone leaves a line on her little finger.
Evans spoke about his situation with the iPhone with more passion, saying, “I want something to work until it doesn’t.” It is both a profound and timely critique of our disposable global culture.
OK, so how did we get here? Last month, Chris Evans posted a photo on Instagram that showed him transferring data from his iPhone 6S to a new iPhone. He wrote: “RIP iPhone 6S. We ran well. I will miss your home button. battery, at 15%, completely dead in minutes. It was a mad rush. Rest easy, buddy. #tilthewheelsfalloff”
A fitting homage to an old iPhone. But why did he keep his old iPhone for so long? The short answer, it seems, is for the home button. It’s a real button. In his Collider interview, Evans dismissed people saying he should get an iPhone SE, which is the only iPhone Apple currently sells with a home button. It is implied that Evans knows that the iPhone 6S had the last real home button on an iPhone. When Apple released the iPhone 7, it replaced the physical button with a circular dot that used haptics to mimic the action and feedback of a physical button. This same fake home button is found on the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, SE (2020) and SE (2022).
If his iPhone 6S was barely working, it seems he held it back for another reason: the principle of the set. Why buy a new phone when an old one worked perfectly fine? Granted, it looks like Evans used the 6S for as long as he could – over six years, assuming he bought it the year it was released. And although Evans didn’t mention it, the iPhone 6S not getting update to iOS 16which probably means it’s time for other iPhone 6S owners to upgrade to a newer model, if only to maintain security breach protection.
Every year, phone manufacturers release new models. On the one hand, this annual cycle allows companies to upgrade the hardware of their phones to be more competitive. But on the other hand, it is rather wasteful. Other tech products like headphones and cameras aren’t on a yearly upgrade cycle, and years can pass between models. Add in complicating factors like the complete removal of a home button and things like a headphone jack and it’s easy to understand Evans’ frustration. He had a phone with a lightweight home button, then “upgraded” to a new, heavier iPhone that lacked a home button and headphone jack. I’d be less than thrilled, too.
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