The iPhone 6 Review
by Joshua Ho, Brandon Chester, Chris Heinonen & Ryan Smith on September 30, 2014 8:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iPhone 6
Final Words
Overall, the iPhone 6 is a significant step up from the iPhone 5s. One of the first areas where we see noteworthy changes is in the industrial design of the phone. Instead of the hard edges that we saw with the iPhone 5 design, the sides of the phone are now all curved in nature to give much better in-hand feel, and the result is surprisingly appealing as well due to how the glass curves down to meet the metal body. The iPhone 6 is also sitting right around the best balance of display size and one-handed usability, which helps with the in-hand feel aspect. I really have to make it a point to address size in the case of the iPhone 6. While this is definitely a matter of personal opinion and will vary from person to person, I find the size of the iPhone 6 to be refreshing after using phone after phone that pushed display size too far. While Reachability is definitely helpful, the size of the iPhone 6 is such that I really wouldn't miss such a feature on the iPhone 6 because it is an appropriate size. I never really had any issue handling a flagship from 2013 like the Nexus 5, Galaxy S4, G2, or One (M7), so this is a recent issue for me. Those that find those phones to be a good size will likely find the iPhone 6 to be similarly fit for their hands.
While I like the iPhone 6’s industrial design, increasing overall thickness to eliminate the camera hump could be an interesting variation as it would also bring a larger battery. Some users may also dislike the thick plastic lines, though I personally don’t notice this in day to day use.
The display itself is also a solid improvement, with incredible native contrast, high brightness, great viewing angles, and great calibration. I still feel like I’d want higher pixel density to make it the “perfect” display, but it’s clear that there are some very real limitations on resolution selection for iOS devices due to the point system used. Given that the resolution cannot be changed, the iPhone 6’s display is ultimately one of the best I’ve seen all year.
The SoC is also a significant upgrade, although not quite the jump that we saw from A6 to A7. For the most part, the architecture of the new CPU cores is relatively similar and we see a jump in GPU performance that puts the GX6450 on par with the Adreno 420. Apple continues to ship some of the best CPU and GPU choices on the market, and in our GFXBench rundown test it’s obvious that Apple has an extremely efficient system as skin temperatures remain in check while running at maximum performance for the duration of the GFXBench test. It’s clear that the NAND is also of high performance, although random I/O performance isn’t quite as amazing as sequential performance.
In battery life, once again Apple has managed to successfully maintain good battery life despite a relatively small battery capacity. The iPhone 6’s battery life is consistently near the top tier in this category. In the GFXBench rundown where the iPhone 6 falls short it makes up for it with incredible sustained performance.
Outside of the basic user experience, there are still even more improvements. The new camera seems to have better low light performance than before, along with significantly improved focus speed. The continuous auto focus enabled by phase detection autofocus is a killer feature for video when combined with the improved stabilization function. For a relatively small sensor size, Apple has managed to drive performance that rivals the relatively larger cameras of the competition. At the 1/3” sensor size, I’m not aware of a camera that is more balanced in its capabilities for daytime photography, low light photography, and anything in between.
In audio quality, Apple has delivered a solution on par with HTC’s audio solution, which places it among the best for this generation that we’ve tested. While there are some issues, there’s relatively little value to pushing audio quality any further unless high resolution audio becomes common.
Finally, the software experience continues to be great. Apple has taken advantage of the increased display size to increase information density out of the box, and generally improved the polish of iOS with iOS 8. We continue to see strong integration of TouchID into software, and with time I expect to see its value increase even more as Apple Pay and the use of TouchID for third party apps becomes widespread. There are only two significant issues that I noticed in my week with the iPhone 6, and one is because the application was originally intended for iOS 6. The only flaw that the iPhone 6 has is a lack of RAM, and this is only an issue if you also felt it was an issue on the iPhone 5s.
Overall, the iPhone 6 has been a surprise for me. While not all that much changed on the surface, this is the first phone that I’ve reviewed all year where I’ve found more to like the deeper I dug. The iPhone 6 is a great phone in its own right and needs no qualifications in that recommendation. While as a current Android user I’m still reluctant to use the iPhone 6 as my only phone, the iPhone 6 is good enough that I’m willing to consider doing so.
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Samus - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Too many people define "good LCD" as having high resolution. In the real world, that just isn't true. There are so many terrible 1920x1080 panels on the market, and I'm not just talking mobile devices.Look at desktop LCD's. To get one properly calibrated you need to spend $500+ for a 24" HP Dreamcolor or NEC Multisync PA Spectraview. Some Dell's with Samsung LCD's are pretty good out of the box but almost nothing is 100% RGB until expensive calibration.
So back to Apple. They're all about balance. They don't push the envelope in any direction like Samsung (and others.) What bothers me lately about Apple is they are "too" safe with their design language and technology that their products are actually becoming boring. As the company that pioneered mainstream unibody mobile devices and multitouch\gesture driven interfaces, it's interesting the competition has essentially been perfecting it for them to just copy back.
At least Apple isn't suing everybody anymore...seems like Steve's thermonuclear crusade is finally dying along with him.
Omega215D - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I do have a problem with people constantly trying to push AMOLED as the ultimate display tech due it being featured on DisplayMate with the Galaxy S5. People forget that you lose the efficiency of OLED once you start using something that displays a lot of white like web browsing. Also, turning down the brightness still has the tendency to give it a "soggy" look to it, though it is much less on the Galaxy S5.The burn in effect can be easily avoided unless the clock/ dock locks up for whatever reason and leaves the display static.
darkich - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
The burn in can be easily prevented also.Download an utterly simple burn in tool app, and leave it working for couple of hours, every few weeks or so.
nevertell - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
This is exactly the kind of thing that people DO NOT WANT TO DO.It's a phone, it must just work, I shouldn't worry about any specific technical part of the phone, let alone do maintenance work on it to keep it functional.
elajt_1 - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
Nah, thats for bad image retention. If you already got a burn-in you can't do anything about that as of now.Toss3 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
In my experience AMOLED displays look a lot better than their LCD counterparts with the brightness turned down. They also give you the option of having even lower screen brightness which is ideal if you want to use it in bed at night (night mode on android looks great on the S4, but not so much on my Nexus 5).hoelee - Thursday, December 4, 2014 - link
IPhone white balance not accurate, how you proven your point said iPhone had good display? At least I saw on mine eye compare between mine z3 with the so call iPhone... Besides, you calculate by yourself, iPhone 6 latest phone less 1x pixels to push compare to android FHD screen. Benchmark alway unfair in mine point of view...braveit - Friday, December 12, 2014 - link
Apple hasn't really done much on it's new iPhone 6 release. Source: http://berichinfo.com/reasons-iphone-6-sucks/Caliko - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
Who else is innovating in design?All phones today are iKnockoffs.
Steve's thermonuclear attack has juat started buddy!! Droid is making manufacture lose billions. Can't wait to see who goes bankrupt first!!
akdj - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
The 'little SD expansion slot' that reads and writes at about 6-8Mb/second vs, the onboard NAND speed tested within the review should be enough to tell you why samsung and ....hmmm ....are offering the micro SD slot. Android is moving 'away' from accessibility to and from the 'off board' storage. I've got a Note 3 and with each update I've been able to do less and lessApparently you didn't bother to read the review ...at all. You also mention 'good LCD ...at least as good as the competitors.'
Then you quite DisplayMate. The S5. And the single point difference between it and it's LCD runner up. From Apple. If you'd have bothered to have read this review ...or the S5 review on Anand's site when it dropped you'd know A) how impressed the author was with the evolution of AMOLED, it's continued refinement and accuracy, brightness and viewing angles. B) you'd notice in EVERY possible measurement. Each one in the review are 'objective measurements'. It (6) tops the display's characteristics in each area someone that knows what a 'great display' entails. At 400+ PPI, you nor any of your freneds will distinguish the difference between it and the new Note 4 or any other 2540 display. It's silly, it's a waste of energy and its detrimental to fluency of the UI (with today's SoC GPU and that many pixels) and the ever important 'battery life'
To be fair, NO OTHER vendor offers 128GB, & 64 is extremely rare. I waited six weeks for a Note 3 w/64GB to show up at AT&T. Never happened and I settled for 32. At the same price as the 64GB iPhone 6.
And from what I've read the 2014 model will have the same. 32GB with a caveat. Buy a micro SD card. Hope Google allows support in the future and keep your fingers crossed. 1080p on my Note chews up space. 4K is quadruple. And it will NOT shoot to the fastest SD or microSD card on the market.
As an ambidextrous owner and user since their inception, I enjoy both Android and iOS. But silly comments like yours shows your ignorance. It was IN THE review! The actual (& damn near identical testing method used by DisplayMate's team will use) 'proof' it's 'LCD ....(IS) @ least as good as its competitors.