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
Design
The iPhone 6 comes with Apple’s newly released iOS 8. For a full rundown of everything Apple is bringing to the table with iOS 8 you can read our review of the operating system itself. iOS 8 also includes changes that are specific to the iPhones 6 and 6 Plus. Much like when Apple moved from the 3.5” 3:2 display in previous iPhones to the 4” 16:9 display on the iPhone 5, these changes are to add support for the new display on the iPhone 6. The home screen now displays an additional row of icons, meaning that it fits even more than an iPad. In addition, all of Apple’s default applications have been updated to take advantage of the larger, higher resolution screen.
Weather. iPhone 6 on the left, iPhone 5s on the right.
In the case of applications like Calculator, the interface simply has larger assets with the same layout as the 4” iPhones. Other applications like Settings and Notes display the elements of the interface at the same size as previous iPhones which allows more to be fit on the screen. Unlike the iPhone 5 which shared the same width as previous iPhones, the increase in space applies along both display axes on the iPhone 6 Plus. This is well demonstrated by the new Weather application which now fits more of the hourly forecast horizontally and more of the weekly forecast vertically.
The keyboard has also been updated to take advantage of the larger display when in landscape mode. The right side of the keyboard has been given dedicated keys for moving the cursor left and right in a text box, as well as a period button. The left side has an undo key and a comma. When the emoji keyboard is enabled it also receives a dedicated button next to the toggle between letters and numbers/special characters.
Another application with landscape specific improvements is Safari. While the iPhone 6 does not get the new split landscape views in applications that the 6 Plus has, it does get the horizontal tab view in Safari and the sliding bookmark menu on the new tab page. What's interesting is that this Safari interface is nearly identical to that of the iPad version, which is similar to Safari on OS X Yosemite. The one difference is that tabs in the tab view that are from the same website do not stack on top of each other. Apple really seems to want a unified interface and experience for Safari across all of their platforms, and the general design of the interface has translated well to the various different display sizes on iOS and OS X devices.
The iPhone 6 includes a feature called Reachability for users who find the increased display size difficult to use with one hand. Apple is late to the party with their larger displays, and we’ve seen attempts in the past by other manufacturers to make large devices easier to use. Shrinking the interface and displaying it in a bottom corner was a feature Samsung introduced with the Galaxy Note 3. It wasn’t a very elegant solution, but it worked. Apple’s Reachability feature uses a similar idea but implements it in a more elegant fashion. Double-tapping the capacitive ring around the home button shifts the display downward so the top of applications can be easily pressed. Once an action is performed the interface shifts back into position.
The last new feature specific to the new iPhones is Display Zoom. Display Zoom increases the size of what is displayed so that the interface displays the same amount of information that is shown on the iPhone 5, with an internal rendering resolution of 1136x640. This means that all icons, buttons, etc. are displayed in a much larger size than the default view setting. Because everything is being scaled up to the 1334x750 panel, the interface suffers from the slight blurring that you also see in third party apps that have not been updated to support the new iPhones. This feature is likely aimed at users with aging eyes who would like a bigger display to display bigger controls rather than to display more content, and who aren't concerned about having the sharpest text.
A notable feature that is missing is Apple's new Apple Pay service that works with the NFC hardware in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Although Apple Pay is a feature of the new iPhones and of iOS 8, the service will not be rolling out until October. Other iOS 8 features like SMS Relay and iCloud Photo Library were also absent from the initial iOS 8 release and are scheduled to launch in October. It's likely that the fact that the iOS 8 release date is determined by the yearly release of new iPhones forced some features to be pushed back to a later update.
UX
While the design of iOS 8 itself is generally well-implemented, the user experience ends up a bit more mixed, and the result comes from the confluence of hardware and software. In the case of the iPhone 6, these issues effectively boil down to RAM and odd layouts that come from the upscaling needed for the 1334x750 display. In the case of upscaling artifacts, this is a temporary issue at best but it's glaringly obvious when an application is upscaled in certain cases.
For example, Trillian is an IM application that hasn't been updated in over a year. While it was already lacking in functionality with iOS 7 as it lacked support for the background refresh API, on the iPhone 6 in iOS 8 there are significant issues with consistent spacing and there's also no support for third party keyboards. Once again, it's important to understand that this isn't the result of poor work on Apple's part, but it does show the limits of what can be done with the upscaling system and emphasizes the need for developers to keep their applications updated.
The other issue has the potential to be far more serious. While iOS' software architecture is more RAM efficient due to manual garbage collection and the use of precompiled binaries, it's quite easy for me to push the phone past the breaking point in Safari. For example, six tabs of common websites for mobile devices cannot consistently be held in memory. If I continuously go through all six tabs, at least one will need to reload. In my first attempt at running this test, Safari crashed as I tried to go through all tabs constantly to keep them in memory. I didn't notice this behavior in the new Moto X, which can do the same test without issue. Outside of memory intensive use cases though, the iPhone 6 does respectably and I usually don't notice the lack of RAM. I have to emphasize that this should be a generally unlikely problem, and that the same behavior can be replicated on the iPhone 5s given the same workload. If you did not have issues with out of memory crashes before, there won't be any issues now.
Outside of these two flaws, there's really a lot to like. iOS continues to deliver a relatively well-polished experience that few seem to be able to match. Most of my issues from the iPhone 5s experience have been resolved. For example, it's now possible for me to upload photos to Dropbox selectively instead of turning camera upload on and deleting photos that I don't want to upload. The odd segregation of current notifications and missed notifications has been removed. Swiftkey has been added, although it's not quite the same as the Android version due to the different prediction insertion behavior and keyboard layout.
In addition, although it isn't necessarily the result of software, the larger display really helps with improving touch accuracy when compared to the iPhone 5s. While I haven't been able to try out Apple Pay since it will be launching in October, it also seems to be quite intriguing as the NFC solution is quite novel, though I'd like to see further use of NFC outside of payment and similar applications. TouchID continues to be a key differentiator, and the use of TouchID for Apple Pay authentication would definitely show the strength of Apple's hardware and software integration.
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Caliko - Tuesday, October 6, 2015 - link
A good phone runs its own OS.You and that moron don't understand HD so your obsession is invalid.
echtogammut - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
He isn't wrong about anything he said, but I just can't imagine getting worked up enough to say it. As a current Apple user/developer, I have every Apple product. I like their stuff, but I can't say I am obsessed about it. I also have a lot of the competing products, so I am constantly toying with all of them. When my current iPhone breaks, I will probably replace it with a Sony Xperia Z3 compact, because it looks like a perfect phone for me. I am not interested in a bigger phone and I would like something that is waterproof, because I run or ride a rain, sleet or shine. I personally think Apple is falling behind in the world of business and multi-use devices. I am seeing a lot of customers whom I developed business apps for iOS coming back and wanting to move to Microsoft or Android platforms because the devices are more powerful and offer more robust features.GerryS - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
I agree. He makes some good points, though most of them are seriously overstated. For most users (yes, nearly everyone in my experience) a "pretty dang good" display is about as good as we can be bothered to look for. I actually like the display on my iPhone 4s. I've never had a complaint, except that it is small, so I got an iPad.See, I don't actually like it that Apple went for big phones. I carry my phone in my pants pocket. The 6 might be about the limit of the size phone I want. If I could get an updated 4s with the processor and other basic features of the 6, that's what I'd buy.
So, for most consumers, we want something that works. I had 4 Android phones before Verizon got the iPhone. I liked them pretty well, but they kept breaking. I went to Apple for dependability, and have not been disappointed. I've only had a couple of problems (even with my jailbreaks), and they've always been easy to fix.
I do like it when Apple leads the way, but it would be silly to expect them to have all of the advances. So many people compare the iPhones to Android phones, listing all of the things that came out first or "better" on Android phones. They seem to forget that there are dozens of companies making Android phones. The best of them have only one or tow innovations at a time - about the same as Apple manages. Apple continues to be one of the leaders, as long as you compare them to one company at a time.
If you want the universe of advances coming from Android manufacturers, then go buy an Android. We really won't hold it against you. For me, I like my iPhone and iPad. My wife has Android (at my recommendation) because we could get some features that were important to her.
Actius - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Lol, he is wrong about his engine analogy! Seriously, none of that makes any sense. Haha, and what's a "V8 compressor"? My goodness...people shouldn't talk about things they really don't know. Just reading that was cringe worthy.sigmatau - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
I'm going to guess you are not so dense as to be picking at the spelling but instead don't know what is a v8 Kompressor. Not only one of the best engines that Mercedes made, but also award winning by 3rd parties.techconc - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Actually, he is either wrong or extremely misguided in almost everything he's said. Feel free to pick your argument of choice. He starts off by saying how the iPhone 6 launch was disastrous. As compared to what? What other vendor will sell 10 million devices on a launch weekend? Even for Apple, it broke their own previous records. I'm genuinely grateful for people that prove they're an idiot right up front. It lets me know I can either skip the rest of the post or read on for purely amusement purposes.That's just the conceptual part of the post. His technical observations were equally misguided. Especially with regard to screen quality, etc. Clearly he didn't bother reading the Anandtech review he's commenting on.
shm224 - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
@techconc: Sure, what other products you know starts to bend, or totally crap out after the first buggy update, or even have features withdrawn due to more bugs all within the first week of release?akdj - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
Really? You're still convinced the iPhone (6 OR 6+) actually and easily 'bends' in the first week? Buggy update? The one available for about two hours that few downloaded and within ten hours of pulling it a fixed update was released? Features withdrawn? I'm intrigued ..as an owner and realist like techconc, the person you responded to... I've GOT to know!I'm patiently awaiting my pair of 6+s for my wife and I. We just returned from the mall and the Apple Store specifically playing for almost two hours with them. I built a two minute movie and. Rendered in 1080p in about 35/40 seconds, air dropped to myself. Un. Believable phone. It's. Amazing
We ordered launch day through our business representative. Lol. Silly me. Ship date estimate is pretty specific, actually a bit ambiguous with the latest update. 11/2-11/28/14:-)
Oh well. Plenty of time to allow developers to continue updating their apps.
Between my Air, rMBP 15" and the iPhone 5s /6+, my business of 27 years has been revolutionized. Literally, over the past half decade, as a pilot and sound/video producer...weight savings alone are enough to double our profits. And ½ our setup snd break down times. Even my 'flight bag' of nearly fifty pounds isn't necessary. With three retina minis in the cockpit for redundancy, the 'paper' is still there, but unnecessary any more for updates to plates and Jep charts, winds aloft and weather/traffic ...even diversion airports, filing my flight plan and telling me how thirsty she is! Fuel calculated, with a GPS dongle a tenth the price and 100 fold quicker to lock n track than avionics just a half decade ago provide incredible accuracy. ADSB and TCAS (3D terrain, weather and other traffic/with their specific info; altitude, speed, heading, and Xspnder --- TCAS, a warning system that 'tells you what to do' in conjunction with other planes fitted with the system including all commercial traffic and many GA pilots with ILS certifications ...Alaska can get nasty quick and having to 'duck down' these two systems alone are incredible and 'reasonably priced' advancements!).
I'm not sure there's a place in my life iOS has t changed. As a father, business owner and operator, little league and wrestling coach, and pilot...each iteration has improved signficantly enough in 'most situations' to justify yearly updates for me. iPhones hold their value. Until the 4s, AT&T was generous and 'allowed' a 12 month subsidized update. With the business I also provide 17 full time employee iPhones so we've been lucky enough to 'recoup' some of the money spent each update
I just sold an employee's iPhone 5, 32GB AT&T with a cracked screen, scratched to hell and working perfectly. With excellent battery health and perfect camera lens (only scratch-less area of the phone!) for $235 to a local repair guy. He saw me in the mall with the Gazelle box (more than a hundred bucks less) on my way to the USPS. Asked what I was sending. Told him. Showed him a 'picture' or seven before I unboxed it, but he was adamant ...he was able to shine it up with his pieces n parts for $45 or less! Told me it would cost a customer about $210 to do the work but parts were 20% the cost ...labor and time is the price. From there he was confident he could sell it for $325-350 at his kiosk within 24 hours.
My son has had his fifth generation iPod touch for two years. He's nine. No scratches. No scuffs. Clean a booger or twelve off once a week but other than that, it's completely 'perfect'. These iPhones are built damn near the same. Sleek, thin and well balanced ...no bugs, incredibly quick and unless you're a dumbass and put your $800 pocket computer in your rear pocket of your jeans and SIT on it, you're an idiot ...and you've got to be SIGNIFICANTLY overweight AND hit the precise angle in order to 'mash' 100 pounds of pressure to a 'single point'/torque.
Can you bend em? Yep. It's been proven and EVERY piece of proof we've seen visually demonstrates the incredible amount of force necessary and in such a way not indicative of daily use or situations a consumer would find themselves in 99.9% of the time.
Don't. Be. Silly. I respond not only to you but to all those talking like you. Until you've used one. Felt one. Actually spent time with it, it's difficult to understand.
These are absolute and unequivably the BEST two phones on the maket at this time. With the best and most abundant apps/software optimized to its specs. Support to back it up. And resale value when Ya get bored and ready for a new one. You'll recover your 'down payment' plus fifty percent in many cases ...if you take care of it. Seemingly, they're even more valuable than a same year flagship Samsung Note 2, as I wasn't able to get more than $125 for that joke. Note 3 got it right. But it took twice the cores, clocked at twice the speed with three times the memory ( ⅔ to ¾ of which is in use even without an app running! I've got one though and don't take me wrong, I love it) to get 'close' to the GUI fluency of the iPhone & iOS
That's. SAD. That's. Buggy. I'd much rather have a phone that bends with a hundred pounds of torque in a certain and specific area than I would gambling I'll get an update, deal with carriers and OEM bloat and shitty aesthetics and design. Lack of support or resale, lack of apps and software ...& the apps and software in parity are incredibly more enjoyable and stable on iOS. I like my Note for browsing and the SPen. I think an active digitizer would put the six plus over the top but as it is, it's perfect.
Indeed, I'll continue using (& owning) my N3. But I'm not the least bit compelled with the '4' and its 2540 display. While I'm sure there's noticeable and 'obvious' benefits to having 550/600+ PPI ...I'll warn ya when you're 38-42, speaking from experience...you'll need 'cheaters';) ...like our ears, our eyes deteriorate as well ...the elasticity of our lens and ability to change and 'maintain' up close focus just ...goes away! Hence the incredible benefits I've found witg the HiDPI display technology. 3D? Good riddance! It was a joy to see 4k/Ultra HD and even examples of 5/6 & 8K motion display AND capture gear instead of dumbass glasses and crappy off center viewing with limited content.
Apple lead the way and destroyed multi billion dollar monsters in the industry with the iPhone. They then changed consumer display technology's availability. HiDPI and increased resolution is awesome. But to a certain point. Your 1080p 65" LED LCD IPS or AMOLED TV in the living room at 10-12 feet or typical viewing distances is around 100ppi. Quadrupling the resolution (4k) while not exactly linear, will amount to approximately an increase of 100%. To 200ppi. Not four foukd as you may think.
The 'new' ipad(3)/4 -- iPhone 4 -- the rMBPs --- ALL Game Changing home runs. Putting a certain 'joy' back into 'work' again. With SUCH an accurate palate and the ability of OS X'es scaling of the UI (& third party apps the same ...utilizing pixel for pixel when necessary or quadrupling for the GUI simultaneously and without 'glitches' or latency is a marvel in engineering. Coupled with the IrisPro 5200/750m and PCIe SSD at a TB with read and write speeds exceeding a Gb/s, Thunderbolt 2 and its 'one' cable capabilities and abilities to run multiple 4K displays ...shoot man. Seems like yesterday I was hunting the wax pencils and cutting my fingers slicing tape ...now it's immediate and fast as hell in a four pound package at a dozen times the resolution.
Times are good if you're an Apple user. And thats JUST the hardware!
OS X and iOS's march to marriage is incredible. Continuity and Handoff. Air drop between iOS and OS X, as well ...the aggregation and integration between the devices you're using is revolutionary. Period. Only Windows has the power and support vertically and horizontally to compete with what Apple's doing. Vertical & Horizontal backbones.
No one that needs to 'work' is buying a Chromebook
J
elajt_1 - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
This must've been the longest and weirdest Iphone ad I've ever read. ;-)techconc - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
@shm224 - I now know several people with iPhone 6 and 6+ devices that keep them in their pockets. They all seem to agree that there is no merit to this "bend gate" nonsense. While nobody doubts that these phones can bend under a certain amount of pressure (90 lbs. according to Consumer Reports), from a practical matter, it's a non-issue. Further, I find it rather interesting that phones such as the HTC One which bend under significantly less pressure (70 lbs.) don't receive the same sort of media attention.As for the 8.0.1 update, yup, Apple screwed that up. Fortunately, for Apple, the update was pulled after about an hour. It's also fortunate that in only affected some phones and only for the over the air update as opposed to the iTunes update. To your point, no, this typically isn't an issue for other phones... then again, neither are regular updates.