GADGET GIZMO SPECIAL REVIEW : iPhone 6 & iPhone 6 Plus

Real magic lies in Apple's iOS 8

Bigger. Bigger. Bigger.

The new Apple iPhones going on sale this week, the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, have crisper screens, faster processors and sharper cameras. 

And, as you might have heard, they are also bigger than previous iPhones - the 6 Plus by a long shot - joining the stampede toward bigger handsets. But after almost a week of trying the phones, it became clear that the hardware was not the best part of the package. In its quest to deliver bigger phones to a market clamoring for them, Apple has made one phone that is actually a little too small and one that's a little too big.

The best part of the new phones is actually the new software inside, which is available for some older models, too, starting on Wednesday. The software, iOS 8, combines some of the advanced features of Android with Apple's ease of use and reliability.

Because of the software, it's hard to see many iPhone fans straying from Apple, even if they don't buy new iPhones immediately.

The iPhone 6 is a 4.7-inch device, up from 4 inches on the iPhone 5 and 5S. It's a little wider than those phones, too.

Those dimensions make it slightly smaller than the top Android and Windows devices on the market, helping it fit easily in jeans pockets. Compared with a Samsung Galaxy S5 or the HTC One (M8), though, the iPhone 6 screen feels constrained. The iPhone 6 starts at $200 with a new contract. 

The iPhone 6 Plus is a behemoth. It has the same size display as the LG G3, at 5.5 inches, but is significantly taller. It's longer even than the Galaxy Note 3, which has a 5.7-inch display. It starts at $300 with a new contract.

Both the 6 and 6 Plus get thinner, flatter and more rounded shapes than their predecessors, losing the squared-off sides on the more recent models. The effect looks sleek, but feels slippery. Dropping seems imminent as you stretch your thumb across the larger screens.

Apple takes some small steps to mitigate the finger stretch with a feature called Reachability, which lets you touch (not press) the home button twice to shift the screen down to the bottom half of the display. 

The feature works nicely for one-handed scrolling and finding app icons, but it doesn't do much else. If you're in an email, for example, you can't get access to any actions like Reply or Archive.

Apple could have taken a cue from other makers of so-called phablets (a blend of the words "phone" and "tablet") and come up with powerful ways to take advantage of those bigger screens. 

For example, the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 4 will let users resize app windows using a finger or stylus and view multiple windows simultaneously on its 5.7-inch display, as on a desktop computer. The 5.5-inch LG G3 lets you open two apps at once and resize them as you like.

The iPhones do include some tricks created for bigger phones, like a zoom feature that lets you subtly increase the size of app icons and text in native apps.

And when you turn the phones sideways, into landscape mode, the keyboard in the built-in apps like Mail and Messages has more options - a microphone, undo key, period and comma and others on the iPhone 6, and even more on the iPhone 6

Those extra iPhone 6 Plus keys disappear if you choose the zoomed display, however. And the iPhone 6 Plus is so big that in landscape mode, I had a hard time reaching the keys to type.

Even the built-in Apple keyboard doesn't get any extra keys when holding the phone upright, the way the Samsung and LG keyboards include number keys above the letters, and period and comma keys.

As for the features that people love about their iPhones, they only get better. The iPhone 6 cameras, for example, are outstanding.

Both rear-facing cameras have new sensors that deliver faster autofocus, better face detection and the ability to capture high-resolution panoramas. The faster focus is immediately obvious, even in casual use.

By Molly WoodNew York Times | 17 Sep, 2014