iOS 6 on iPhone 3GS?

It’s OK, but you’d be better off buying a shiny new iPhone 5, or even a discounted 4S.

The 5 is so sleek and light, I’m almost tempted to trade in my 4S after just 11 months of light use. I’d probably go ahead and take the AT&T hit, except that the camera isn’t really a whole lot better. It’s a wonder that Apple managed to fit the same-specced camera (five element lens, f/2) into 20% less space, but that doesn’t help me any. Apparently it’s great shooting in low light, but that’s what I have a Nikon SLR for. No phone is ever going to beat an SLR with a real flash you can bounce off the ceiling.

And about that flash? I refuse to use the one on my 4S, because it produces such crappy light. Well, it’s an LED flash, like on every other smartphone, and LEDs make bad for bad flashes. So I shoot in available light, which is fine, because I’m usually just grabbing pics of kids or food for Twitter.

Now I have updated my phone and iPad to iOS 6, and so far I have no complaints. Mostly I’m jazzed that Siri has come to iPad. But I did notice one very curious thing.

After my phone was finished upgrading, I noticed the screen seemed brighter. So I checked the brightness setting, and iOS 6 had defaulted it lower than I’d set it myself. Quite a bit lower, actually. That’s a neat trick, if Apple has managed to make the screen easier to see at lower settings. And, yes, my iPad defaulted to the same thing: Brighter screen; lower setting. I’m curious if battery life will be improved.

That right there might be the killer feature of the new OS.