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
Cellular
As was previously announced, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus both have support for carrier aggregation and VoLTE. For those that are unfamiliar with the two technologies, carrier aggregation is a method of combining multiple pieces of spectrum for simultaneous use, so it would be possible to piece together one band of 10 MHz and another band of 10 MHz spectrum to achieve the same rate that one would get with a single band of 20 MHz LTE. VoLTE is the next generation of voice service that is delivered over LTE, thus eliminating the need for complicated circuit-switched fallback mechanisms to WCDMA or GSM that are currently required. This is all enabled by the move to Qualcomm's MDM9x25 Gobi modem, which is built on 28HPm and therefore brings lower power when compared to the MDM9x15 generation fabricated on 28LP.
GNSS
As the iPhone 6 has Qualcomm's Gobi MDM9x25 modem inside, it goes without saying that it also has IZat Gen 8B. While it isn't possible to force GPS-only location and location is disabled when airplane mode is on, with WiFi turned off and no SIM inserted in the phone a location lock occurs in around 11 seconds.
Misc
While we normally do a WiFi performance test, for some reason it is no longer possible to get a good iperf port for the iPhone 6. It's likely that we're looking at a single spatial stream solution, and given the track record of Broadcom design wins for the WiFi/BT combo chip it's likely that this is a BCM4339 solution. Apple continues to integrate noise cancellation in the earpiece, and at least two microphones are integrated into the phone. Subjectively the single downward-firing speaker reaches acceptable levels of volume although I haven't been able to get the necessary equipment to test peak volume.
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Drasca - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Less workload = longer charge.Since we don't know the actual workload your teenagers are inconclusive. Given literal different Apple to Win Phone app economy systems, the usage model is further blurred. For all we know, your teenagers could be using the iphone more / intensively, but no conclusion can be drawn.
Personally, I think all your family should be spending less time on the phone, but that's me.
cknobman - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
No doubt they should be on the phone less and I try my damnedest to get them off.My wife is the problem and unfortunately that is a battle I wont win. Since I dont wont a divorce I have to make concessions somewhere.
If it were up to me my kids would not even have smartphones. Right the farthest I can go is to take them away when they are making poor grades and/or get in trouble.
Parhel - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
I couldn't exactly tell from your comment if you have the 5 or the 5s. If you have the 5, though, check if your phone is part of the battery recall. Mine was, and after the replacement, the difference was night and day.cupholder - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
I have a Note 3 that would last between 10 and 48 hours on a single charge. Yes, android is that annoyingly variable in that regard. The higher numbers tended to occur once I got AutoStarts and Greenify(rooted).With the iPhone 6+, I'm getting 36+ hours. I haven't done a full rundown outside of the first day, but I was actively trying to kill it to properly calibrate the battery for the first use. It was at 36 hours of use with 14 hours of "Usage" time. No idea how much of that was screen time. With the Note, I never got more than 6-7 hours of screen time.
Note during a day of work: Come home ~30-40%.
iPhone 6+ during a day of work: Come home ~70-85%.
This includes an hour break of constant screen on time and YouTube/Crunchyroll/Netflix viewing during that hour.
So, no, the battery life on this phone IS awesome.
dmacfour - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Why do you think the performance of the previous generation is indicative of the performance of the 6+?Stimpak_Addict - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
I got an iPhone 6, and I can attest that the display is very impressive.One thing that does bother me is the scaled apps that have not been optimized for iPhone 6's larger display. Mainly the fact that it makes the size of the keyboard inconsistent with apps that have been optimized for the larger screen. Of course, this will be fixed in time as developers update their apps.
beggerking@yahoo.com - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
i don't know why you would attest a 720p screen as being "impressive"...imo iphone 6+ screen is much better.
ufarooq - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Hey guys...how did you estimated SPECINT2000 score? Did you run these workloads?Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Yes. We have built a version of SPECint2000 to run on iOS. These are estimated scores because SPEC CPU2000 is retired, which means further scores cannot be submitted as official.SunnyNW - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Interesting Apple has been able to consistently deliver a die shrink (whether half-node or full-node) each year and if Samsung delivers like promised I guess can continue that next year with the A9 but I wonder if that will be the end of the year over year improvement...