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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Oxford Guy - Saturday, October 4, 2014 - link
"With Cyclone Apple hit on a very solid design: use a wide, high-IPC design with great latency in order to reach high performance levels at low clock speeds. By keeping the CPU wide and the clock speed low, Apple was able to hit their performance goals without having to push the envelope on power consumption, as lower clock speeds help keep CPU power use in check. It’s all very Intel Core-like, all things considered."The G4 and G5 processors were wide when Intel was doing its lame NetBurst thing. The "wide and shallow" G4 in particular had low clock speeds. The "wide and deep" G5 bumped them up a bit. The "narrow and deep" NetBurst was the high clock speed awful performance per watt Intel brainchild.
Coup27 - Saturday, October 4, 2014 - link
"Fortunately, based on the USB device information for the phones, both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus support charging with power adapters like the iPad charging block that can provide up to 2.1 amps at five volts. Using one of these chargers will dramatically reduce charge time on the new iPhones, and it's a very worthwhile investment (assuming you don't already have an iPad) for the iPhone 6 Plus in particular."If this was any other phone manufacturer they would have been lambasted for taking the cheaper route and not providing a charger which charges the battery in the most optimal time. However, with this being Apple and all, it's perfectly acceptable to ship a 1A charger and it's a "worthwhile investment" for the user to buy another charger (if they don't already have one) with a higher current to charge their phone faster.
Simply not acceptable. As much as I love this site, this review is no more than the typical Apple fodder which is trotted out all over the web. The fact that one German publication was recently struck off the media list by Apple for posting a bending video of the 6 Plus vs Note 3 shows what happens when the media dare say something negative and it's quite clear they would rather stay on Apple's good side than be truly honest in their reviews.
There was no mention in this review about half the hardware choices made here. The screen ppi was very lightly glossed over. No mention of the lack of stereo speakers or waterproofing to name but a few. Someone suggested that waterproofing adds a lot of bulk to the phone. On the S5 I would agree, however the Xperia Z3 is only 0.4mm thicker than the iPhone 6 so it can be done whilst still looking stylish.
Apple produced marketing photos where they photo shopped out the camera bump. Yet here it is described as an "interesting design choice". No mention of it wobbling all over the place when placed on a flat surface. Let's look at PDAF. Given virtually no time on the S5 review but a full explanation given here. The S5 review was also 10 pages long written by 2 people, this is 14 pages written by 4 people.
Sometimes you can't move on the home page on this site for articles about Apple, yet there has been nothing so far, not even a pipeline story about the disastrous bugs coming out of iOS 8.
Add to this the badly managed silent departures of Anand and Brian to Apple, I don't think there's much point reading Apple reviews any more.
tralalalalalala40 - Sunday, October 5, 2014 - link
1) Everyone charges overnight, no difference to user experience.2) No proof that german media site was struck off some magical list.
3) ppi does not equal quality. (Unless you believe more MP is better, then please just go buy a lumia)
4) no phone is water proof, it's a range of water resistance.
5) no proof that apple photoshopped their own marketing material to change the camera design
6) no one uses their phone with the back flat on the table
7) every OS has bugs, the issue is that apple actually gives out upgrades (que the majority of android users still stuck with a massively susceptible default browser). You won't hear about android L issues because it will take 2+ years to be on 20% of android phones.
8) employees change jobs. everyone knows about it, do you want a NYTs editorial about it?
9) if you want non-scientific reviews go to cnet.
Coup27 - Sunday, October 5, 2014 - link
I can't decide which is worse. The answers in post, or the arrogance.1. Not true. People's lives are all different. To suggest everyone's phone can last until they go to bed is a massive generalisation. The supplied charger should charge the phone in the most optimal time, regardless when the phone is charged.
2. http://blog.gsmarena.com/apple-completely-loses-pl...
3. Why are you talking about two different things? ppi is clearly directly related to quality. You could have the best panel money could buy but if the ppi was 96 on a 5" screen it would look terrible. It is now widely accepted, and even mentioned in this review that ~450 ppi is a perfect balance between resolution and battery life. MP has no relevance in this discussion.
4. There are many IP67 phones which are immersion proof up to 1M for 30 minutes. There are now IP68 phones which are immersion proof beyond 1M for 30 minutes. If they phone can be dunked under water, that's water proof.
5. http://blog.gsmarena.com/apple-iphone-6-features-c...
6. Do you speak for everybody in the world?
7. KitKat and Jelly Bean account for over 75% of Android devices. (Google it if you want the source). Yes, budget phones are often left behind in software, but that's because they are budget phones. People sign up for that experience when they pay a fraction of the cost of an iPhone or Android flagship.
8. Anand moving to Apple should have broke on this site, not every other tech site. Anand has gone on for years about openness and honesty. Where was it then? Brian disappeared completely and despite multiple requests, nobody would say where he had gone. That news was also broken by other tech sites. It was like AT had something to hide. Nobody would have really cared if they had gone to Apple, so why do it in the shadows.
tralalalalalala40 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
1) If you need a phone to last an inordinate amount of time get the charging cases.2) Hoax, they are invited to the ipad air 2 event: https://twitter.com/CB_Telzerow
3) false, if samsung released a 5000 ppi phone that was slow as hell (like the note 4 is http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/04/samsung-... ) how is that high quality? iPhone 6 was proven to have the best color which is more important than pixels you can't see.
4) yep, you can get a case for this if this is your thing. there is more choice with apple here since there are 1000x as many cases to suit your need. (with android you are locked in to what the device maker makes since there aren't that many niche cases)
5) thanks for the proof. no photoshop just choice of angles. go look at the apple website for many angles of the bulge if that is your thing.
6) in this case yes, it's not ergonomic to use the phone that way. it's why droid makers gave up on the kickstand
7) that number is for those that use google play (which accounts for <8% of all android phones, lol)
8) name another news site that had a going away article by one of the employees. especially one going to work for a company that requires employees to not bring attention to themselves (think non-compete)
thanks
gonsolo - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
I'd like to see a benchmark of app startup times since this is where I have to wait most of the time nowadays.tralalalalalala40 - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
http://www.cultofandroid.com/69538/iphone-6-multit...iphone 6 is blazing fast. note 4 needs 32 cores to compete.
falc0ne - Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - link
"In battery life, once again Apple has managed to successfully maintain good battery life despite a relatively small battery capacity". Seriously? Since when iPhone has a good battery life. You can never go through the day with one. Everyone knows that. Sorry guys but ain't buying that. If this is good, then what does that make Xperia Z3? Good of Thunder in battery? :)falc0ne - Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - link
**God of thunder:) autocorrect dictionary typo . anyway...you get my pointHook Em14 - Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - link
Wow...hardcore Android fanboys have to be some of the most ignorant, illogical, and pathetic people around.