iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review Technology and GamesAustralian Broadcasting Corporation
Alex Kidman reviews the new iPhones and ABC Tech Editor, Nick Ross adds a second opinion.
A curious thing happened while I was testing the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. After Apple s hype heavy announcement of its two premium phones for 2014, I expected that the iPhone 6 Plus would be the easy recommendation, because as in years past, Apple s loaded up its most expensive device with the best features, leaving the slightly cheaper option slightly behind the pace.
Instead, I find myself greatly preferring the iPhone 6, and it has little to do with the furore around bending the aluminium frame in a pants pocket. For whatever it s worth, after a week s worth of bouncing around in pockets and bags, the review iPhone 6 Plus I ve been testing is still entirely flat with nary a bend to be seen.
Still, the iPhone 6 Plus is the model that Apple s selling as its best iPhone, and it s undeniably priced that way too. The two tier model is one that Apple s used for the past couple of years, with one better model and one slightly cheaper model, although Apple doesn t really play in the budget smartphone space.
That was certainly the case last year with the iPhone 5s/5c, and prior to that, if you didn t pay the full premium price, you were left with the model left over from the year prior with much less onboard storage and a much slower processor.
This year, however, Apple s gone for the same physical design and largely the same internal design for both the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. They ve got the same A8 processor, 1GB of RAM and M8 motion coprocessor underneath, along with Apple s TouchID sensor, which is now unlocked for developers to use under iOS 8, and a choice of 16/64/128GB of storage. As is Apple s habit, you can t expand that memory once you ve bought an iPhone with microSD storage as you can with Android, although on the Android side of the fence, any microSD expansion can t be used with applications. Still, the 16GB variant is an oddity on the iOS side, because the generally high price of iPhones means that it s nearly always worth buying the most storage you can afford. It also means that the $799 iPhone 5s which survives as last year s model is the only 32GB iPhone you can buy.
The key and most obvious difference between the two models is the size of the display screen, with the iPhone 6 offerinpatagonia definition of patagonia in the free online1g a 4.7 inch 1334 x 750 326ppi (Pixels Per Inch) display to the iPhone 6 Plus 5.5 inch 1920 x 1080 401ppi display screen. Apple being Apple, it s dubbed both displays as Retina HD. While you can get higher resolution and ppi counts on competing smartphone platforms, the realistic appraisal of the iPhone screen is that both are very good, well balanced displays. Displaymate tests suggest that the iPhone 6 Plus screen in particular is the best LCD you can get on a smartphone right now.
The 6 Plus also benefits from optical image stabilisation on its 8 megapixel rear camera, something that mostly becomes apparent in low light shooting. Apple s kept its camera software simple (as is its way) across both phones in iOS 8, but there are already apps emerging which really start to push the boundaries of what these cameras can do. The one caveat that I ve found with the iPhone 6 Plus is that its larger size, combined with the smooth rounded aluminium corners of this year s iPhone design means that it sometimes slips in the hand when taking photos. This is much less problematic on the iPhone 6 model.
The additional screen size of the iPhone 6 Plus is very good for video watching, and that s not surprising, but right now it s much more of a mixed offering when it comes to other applications. One of the downsides with Apple s legendary secrecy is that while the existence of dual larger screen iPhones was rather well known prior to the keynote, patagonia definition of patagonia in the free online0Apple wouldn t tell developers what to develop for, and as a result, app performance on the larger screens is a very mixed affair. Some apps are fine, while others come with unsightly side borders, or slightly misplaced buttons. There s been a flood of compatibility updates for many apps in the week since the iPhone 6/6 Plus launch, but it s far from given that every app will be updated.
Apple s long contention with larger screepatagonia arizona real estate for salened phones was that they re too hard to use with one hand. It s undeniably true that they re easier with two hands, but Applpatagonia better sweater stripe prussian bluee s solution for single handed use is to make the screen scroll down halfway every time you perform a double touch on the home button. This works, but it s still something that s rather unrefined, because if you have to select an icon with, say, a text entry field, you ll often have to perform multiple double taps in between selection taps to actually get anything done. Given the top half of the screen goes black when it does the scroll movement, perhaps a lock icon in that area might help resolve this issue. For now, it works, but not terribly well, and most iPhone 6 Plus users will find themselves learning double handed moves a lot of the time. Again, this is less pronounced on the iPhone 6, because depending on your hand size 4.7 inches is generally within the grasp of a single hand.
Near Field and far field Communications
Both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are have NFC onboard. It s onboard, but I can t entirely say that they re NFC capable, because Apple has locked down the NFC chip on both phones to only work with its own Apple Pay contactless payment solution. Apple Pay is due to launch in the US in October, but there s been no announcement on its launch in Australia just yet. It s annoying that Apple s constrained NFC in this way, because while I can see that it might not want competing paympatagonia definition of patagonia in the free onlineent solutions to deal with, there are other purposes for NFC bpatagonia definition of patagonia in the free online3eyond payment that the iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus simply cannot handle, and the only reason they can t handle them is because Apple says so. Such, I suppose, is often the way with all things Apple.
Both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are LTE Category 4 devices, which means that they support data download rates of up to 150Mb/s down. They re also both 700MHz LTE devices. I tested two handsets on Telstra s network in Sydney, which is 700MHz capable, and while I never hit a full 150Mb/s downstream connection, they re certainly speedy as long as you don t mind spending the cash on mobile data, which remains a pricey proposition.
There is one clear area where the iPhone 6 Plus dominates the iPhone 6, and that s in battery life. The iPhone 6 battery can last a day with moderate usage and to be fair, I ve never met a phone I can t send flat in a day if I hit it with a heavy enough workload but the iPhone 6 Plus easily sails through a day and with a careful enough usage plan it could feasibly make it through two days if you were a light user. That s primarily a function of its larger size, because like most large screen phones, there s a lot of space to pack in batteries as well.
Apple prices the iPhone range at the top end of the tier, and that hasn t stopped the masses from spending up big, with a claimed 10 million iPhone 6/6 Plus models sold in the opening weekend, although Apple hasn t stated the exact mix of phones sold.
Applepatagonia discount code expedia s big selling strength has long been ease of use, because while iOS is a highly controlled experience, it s also a quite simple one to both learn and explain. That is a different thing to being intuitive, but then I ve long thought that this was a term that was often used by people who forget how daunting a lot of technology can be for many users.
The general ease of use hasn t changed with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but the more I used both, the more I found myself finding the mid size iPhone 6 easier to use simply because I wasn t grappling with the larger body of the iPhone 6 Plus.
The 6 Plus is larger than any other premium smartphone you can buy, including others that sport the same sized 5.5 inch display, and while that s a factor you can learn to live with, at a premium price, and as long as you can manage the difference in battery life, the slightly cheaper iPhone 6 is patagonia expedition race new yorkthe one that I d recommend.
Not every phone has such massive queues on launch day so Nick is also adding a few thoughts on the 6 Plus.
The version 5 iPhones arrived in a big cloud of meh: there were already bigger and more powerful phones on the market and there was little to get excited about from two, new tiny patagonia everlong review hyundaimodels. That all changed with the 6 Plus. The Nokia Lumia like high contrast screen, which makes it look like text and graphics are floating beneath the surface, coupled with superlative viewing angles (the colours look the same even from an angle) make for a high impact device at face value. The solid aluminium rear looks and feels classy although it too evokes the design of the excellent HTC One M8 Android phone. So while not particularly innovative, combining arguably the existing best in show screen type with the best in show body type makes for great build quality. It s also the first iPhone for a while that doesn t feel like it needs a cover.
I should note that I too haven t had any problems with bending.
To be frank, I found the 6 a bit too small and the 6 Plus just a bit too big a single in between size would have been perfect for me. That said, I m a fan of the double touch feature to make one handed use more comfortable.
Not so long ago this would easily be viewed as a phablet a phone so large that it s almost a tablet. Definitions vary but to me this is a patagonia guide jacket reviewsbig phone it really does work well in one hand even though the chassis is actually longer than a Samsung Note 3.
I won t dwell on details but, after using every other phone on the market over the past years, this is the one I d carry on using in between test phones. For the moment. Previously I placed the Sony Xperia Z2 as the leader just ahead of HTC s Opatagonia definition of patagonia in the free online2ne M8 and LG s excellent G3. I still miss the widgets provided by Android but the Plus makes up for that in other ways.
Previously, I ve had the following personal tech requirements to do everything I need: an Android phone, iPad and Windows Laptop. Now I don t need the iPad for anything more than full size games. That s huge for me. The iPad meant I stopped carrying a laptop around and the Plus means that the iPad is now facing redundancy. Meanwhile, do I really need an Android phone? I m not missing one yet.
But the main thing I like about it is the camera. It does things with complex, zoned metering that most SLRs can t do. Its dynamic rapatagonia guide pants don't fitnge (exposing light and dark areas correctly at the same time) is the best in the business. Its low light performance is phenomenal (it beats the HTC One), its quality is top drawer rivaling Nokia and Sony but it s the handling that brings it home patagonia guide pants no handsit focuses and meters instantly and accurately to a far higher degree than the competition. The stabilized video is almost like a steadycam and while we ve seen slo mo features before, the 240fps offered by the 6 Plus, handles and works even better than the excellent Nokias in this area.
But it s not like the rivals are keeping still. It s great to seepatagonia guide pants 33x28 an iPhone leap to the front of the pack again but the recently announced Galaxy Note 4 with features like its Gear VR (virtual reality) headset(!) look mighty tempting. Also its sibling, the Note Edge might yet be the prettiest phone on the market and the pictures of the imminent Sony Z3 make it look incredibly desirable too.
Many people won t care about anything other than the iPhone and if you ve been waiting to upgrade your old model, you ll be happy. If you re wanting the best in the market, however, wait another week or two to see how the Sony Z3 and Samsung Notes fare in their reviews.
