IPHONE 6 AND 6 PLUS REVIEW: BIGGER AND BETTER, BUT STILL YOUR OLD IPHONE
APPLES
NEW PHONES GO WHERE MANY AN ANDROID MODEL HAS GONE BEFORE THEM,
WITHOUT LOSING THEIR SOUL.
Years
ago, it became clear that the smartphone wars would consist of an
epic battle between Apple’s iPhone and a bevy of models based on
Google’s Android. What wasn’t immediately obvious was that the
two camps would persist in having radically different stances on how
large a smartphone should be.
On
one side: Apple, which has maintained that it’s essential that a
phone be small enough to use comfortably with one hand. In the
seven-plus years since the iPhone debuted, it’s bumped up the
screen size only once, from the original 3.5 inches to the iPhone 5's
taller-but-no-wider four inches.
On
the other: makers of Android phones, who have always believed that
bigger is better (in part because it was a a
vulnerability for Apple).
Every major Android flagship model of 2014 has a screen that’s at
least five inches. And “phablets”--phones likeSamsung's
Galaxy Note that
are so spacious they’re practically tablets--go way beyond that.
It’s
made buying decisions difficult for anyone who covets both
seamlessness androominess.
No
longer. While the most radical new feature may be Apple Pay, which
aims to render your wallet full of plastic superfluous--and which
won't arrive until October--the biggest news is that the iPhone 6 and
iPhone 6 Plus are, well, big. And the question on everyone's mind is:
Are they too big?
I
spent a week with both models--loaned to me by Apple for this
review--and found that the single most important thing about the
phones isn't any new spec or feature, but that they still feel like
iPhones. For current owners of Apple phones who aren't tied up with a
carrier contract, the iPhone 6 is among the most irresistible upgrade
the company has ever offered. And the jumbo-sized iPhone 6 Plus,
though definitely not for everybody, is a winning entry in a category
that's previously been an Apple-free zone.
STILL WITHIN REACH
Apple
hasn’t succumbed completely to the trend toward ginormousness. The
iPhone 6's 4.7-inch screen is smaller than those of its major Android
rivals, and even the iPhone 6 Plus’s 5.5-inch display, though
sprawling by iPhone standards, is a skosh smaller than the 5.7-inch
one on Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4.
Those
Galaxy Note phones are distinctly different beasts than the smaller,
more mainstream Galaxy S models (for instance, they come with a pen
for note-taking and doodling). The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, by contrast,
are variations on the same theme. They retain many features from the
iPhone 5s--the aluminum case with impeccable fit and finish, the
single home button on the front, the the same color choice of gray,
silver, or gold. Most of their internal components are the same, too.
But
they aren’t just stretched-out versions of last year’s model. For
instance, Apple relocated the power button from the top edge to the
right side, where it’s easy to reach with your forefinger (if
you’re holding the phone in your left hand) or thumb (right hand).
Both models are thinner than the iPhone 5s; in the hand, they feel
even thinner than they are, because Apple beveled down the sharp
angles of the last few generations of iPhones into curvier, comfier
edges.
The
phones are so svelte that the cameras on their backsides protrude
ever so slightly, a design trade-off which would be no big whoop in
Androidland but is unusual for an Apple product. If you were going to
put your phone in a case anyhow, it’s a non-issue. But be
forewarned: If you lay a naked iPhone 6 or 6 Plus on a table and tap
it with too much gusto, these phones may wobble in a way that their
predecessors did not.
With
both models, the resolution has been upped enough to retain what
Apple calls Retina status: The pixels are so tiny that you can’t
make them out. There are phones with higher pixel-per-inch counts,
but I can’t imagine anyone finding the overall display quality of
these phones--crispness, color, viewing angle--to be anything less
than outstanding.
On
the software side, these are the first iPhones with a choice of two
display modes. Standard view fits the most stuff onto the screen,
while Zoomed magnifies everything slightly, making text easier on the
eyeballs and icons easier to tap. The built-in software, such as the
Safari browser, supports both modes. Third-party developers will need
to update their apps to support both views, but for now, iOS simply
scales them up to the new, larger screens, which works just fine.
Despite
their more expansive dimensions, both phones preserve a measure of
one-handed usability with a new feature called Reachability. Lightly
tap the phone’s home button twice, and whatever’s on the top half
of the display slides down to the bottom half, putting it within easy
reach of your thumb. Like the one-handed mode available on some
Samsung phones, it’s an inherently silly idea--but Apple’s take
on the idea also happens to be surprisingly handy.
With
or without Reachability, the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 crosses a line which
Apple, alone among phone makers, considered sacrosanct until now.
Unless your thumb has an extra joint or two, it won’t reach the the
most distant territory on the screen. Is that an inconvenience
compared to the supremely thumbable iPhone 5s? Yes. Is it a
reasonable trade-off in return for a display whose extra acreage
makes everything from movies to web pages to games more appealing? I
think so, and many Android users would agree. We’ll see how average
iPhone fans feel: A few of the ones I’ve talked to in recent days,
who haven't tried the 6 yet, seem a little intimidated by the
prospect.
AN IPAD FOR YOUR POCKET
If
you find that the notion of an iPhone with a 4.7-inch screen screen
requires mental adjustment, the 5.5-inch display on the iPhone 6 Plus
will be even harder to get your head--and hands--around. Though Apple
will never use the term “phablet” to describe it, the 6 Plus does
indeed feel like a more-or-less-pocketable tablet.
The
Reachability feature is there in the 6 Plus, too, but like a tablet,
it’s primarily a two-handed device. When you hold it in landscape
orientation, some of Apple’s apps make use of the extra real estate
in ways that are reminiscent of their iPad counterparts: Mail, for
instance, shows your inbox on the left and a message preview on the
right. Third-party developers can add similar views, as many already
do on the iPad version of their apps.
The
“Plus” in this model's name doesn’t refer solely to the screen
size. Thanks to a bigger battery, it runs significantly longer on a
charge than the iPhone 6. According to Apple's ratings, it get 24
hours of talk time and 12 hours of LTE web browsing vs. 14 hours and
10 hours for the iPhone 6, respectively. If you’re the type who
buys a phone and then immediately sticks a brick-like battery case on
the back, you might consider just getting an iPhone 6 Plus--big, but
thin--and skipping the external power.
The
6 Plus’s camera also has one feature which is popping up in more
and more smartphones, but is new to iPhones: optical image
stabilization, which helps counteract the blurriness which can result
from shaky camerawork, especially in murky lighting. I didn’t
notice a radical improvement over the shots I took with the iPhone 6,
but that’s okay. Taking image quality, responsiveness, and shooting
options into consideration, these are the two best camera phones I've
ever used.
Like
all iPhones dating back to 2011’s iPhone 4s, the 6 and 6 Plus have
eight megapixels of resolution. Apple’s modus operandi is to get
more out of those megapixels by introducing other advanced
technologies. In this case, the major addition is something which
Apple calls focus pixels--also known as phase detection, and already
available in Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and a variety of serious
standalone cameras. It allows an iPhone--already one of the snappiest
camera phones on the market--to focus even faster.
The
cameras can shoot 1080p video at 60 frames a second, and along with
the hypnotic slow-mo mode introduced last year in the iPhone 5s,
they’ve got an equally transfixing time-lapse option.
FASTER HARDWARE, MEATIER SOFTWARE
Both
the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sport technical improvements of the
type which Apple predictably introduces with every new model. They
use Apple’s new 64-bit A8 processor, and performed twice as fast as
the iPhone 5s when I ran the Geekbench speed test. As usual, the
performance increase isn’t about correcting a deficiency--the
iPhone 5s isn’t sluggish by any rational definition--so much as
giving developers more computational muscle for next-generation apps
which haven’t even been written yet. Games, especially, should
benefit.
The
A8 chip is complemented by the M8 motion coprocessor, an upgrade to
the M7 which debuted in the iPhone 5s. As before, it performs tasks
such as counting your steps for fitness apps, including Health, a new
one from Apple which comes with the phones. Now it can also keep
track of the stairs you climb, using a barometer built into both new
phones. The phones also use the newest, fastest flavor of Wi-Fi and
support some technologies not yet available from all wireless
carriers, such as the ability to place a voice call over Wi-Fi.
And
oh, yes: They run iOS 8, the new version of Apple's mobile operating
system--which will also be available as a free upgrade for current
iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches starting on Wednesday, September 17.
Like
all point-zero operating system updates, iOS 8 isn't entirely devoid
of glitches: I found that the iPhone 6 Plus spontaneously rebooted a
handful of times. (Apple couldn’t immediately explain why, but it’s
the kind of quirk which iOS 8.01, whenever it arrives, will be
designed to fix.) Overall, though, the news is very good. The
streamlined aesthetic which Apple introduced in iOS 7 has barely
changed, but everywhere you go in iOS 8, there are little
improvements that add up to a better experience--so many that I can
only single out a tiny percentage here.
The
new QuickType keyboard uses predictive technology, already available
in Android keyboards such as SwiftKey, to show three word choices as
you type, letting you auto-complete any of them with one tap. Siri
now shows you what it thinks you're saying as you talk, rather than
waiting until you're done to digest your command. Spotlight, iOS's
search feature, finds new items such as map locations and apps you
haven't yet installed. iCloud Drive is a full-blown online storage
system akin to Dropbox and Microsoft's OneDrive. The Photos app lets
you search for images by factors such as date and location, and
sports an array of new editing tools that make it feel like a
pint-sized Photoshop. Messages has new options for video, voice, and
group communications. And the Touch ID fingerprint scanner can be
used to sign into your iTunes account as well as unlock your phone.
A
whole portfolio of features collectively known as Continuity adds
inducements to use as many Apple products as possible. For example,
if you've got an iPhone running iOS 8 and a Mac running the upcoming
OS X Yosemite, you'll be able to use your computer as a speakerphone,
as well as turn the phone into the most futz-free wireless hotspot
I've ever encountered.
Some
of iOS 8's most significant changes involve empowering third-party
developers. If you don't find the QuickType keyboard to be
sufficiently SwiftKey-esque, you'll be able to install SwiftKey
itself, or another keyboard such as Swype, just as Android users can
already do. Apple is also giving developers the ability to place
fancy custom applets into the Notification Center--not the same thing
as Android's desktop widgets, but a close cousin. It's also
introducing HealthKit and HomeKit, frameworks which will help
companies create apps for health and home-automation purposes,
respectively.
n
short, from the bigger screens to the more flexible operating system,
these new phones and their ambitious operating system go a long way
toward leveling the playing field with Android.
Which
is not to say that there aren't plenty of reasons to to consider an
Android phone such as Samsung's Galaxy
S5,
LG's G3,
or HTC's One
M8.
Google's operating system is terrific on its own merits, although it
continues to be most delightful before phone makers have slathered on
additional features and wireless carriers have larded it up with
extra apps. Given the choice, I might trade Apple's Siri for its
Android equivalent, Google Now. And there are still plenty of
attractive features which numerous Android phones have and iPhones do
not--water-resistant cases, for example.
From
the start, Apple has never attempted to make its phones do
everything; it's just tried to make them do the things they do as
well as possible. It's not an approach designed to please impatient
types. But by keeping people waiting for much-requested features, the
company bought the time to do them right in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
iPhone fans, your life is about to get better--and the smartphone
wars are going to get more interesting for everybody involved.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
The
iPhone 6 and iPhone Plus will be available on all four major U.S.
carriers--AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile--and will arrive in
stores on Friday, September 19. The iPhone 6 starts at traditional
iPhone pricing: A unit with 16GB of storage is $199 with a two-year
contract, $649 without. The 16GB 6 Plus is $299 on contract, $749
unsubsidized. For the higher-end versions, Apple has doubled the
storage capacity of the iPhone 5s equivalents: Versions with 64GB are
$100 more than the 16GB ones, and ones with 128GB are another $100 on
top of that.
Both
of the iPhones Apple announced last year, with 4-inch screens, remain
available at lower prices. With a two-year contract, the iPhone 5s
will sell for $99 and the iPhone 5c will be free.
BY HARRY
MCCRACKEN
http://www.fastcompany.com/3035748/iphone-6-and-6-plus-review-bigger-and-better-but-still-your-old-iphone?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fast-company-daily-newsletter&position=3&partner=newsletter
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