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 like Samsung’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 and roominess.
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.
Here are some of the snapshots I took with both phones, at a variety of settings but unedited.
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