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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akdj - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
I'm thinking you've NEVER used an iOS device in your lifetime. What s ridiculous comment. I use both and I'm a happy 'customer'. Half the RAM? Try a third. My Note 3 has 3GB. Cold boot to a fresh screen, within thirty seconds she's using 2.1-2.3GB of RAM. And my Note is a business tool without a bunch of apps, side loads or 'leaks' in software. Funny thing, happy customers make for healthy sales. VERY HAPPY People break RECORDS with each subsequent release...which, in turn, you're correct. Makes happy stock holders. Breaking records year after year isn't because they're using 'cheap' components or 'holding back'. It would've been MORE profitable to maintian the same pricing scheme without the 128GB (only industry OEM offering this much storage at these read and write speeds) & WITH 2GB of RAM. Significantly cheaper. But there's a solid reason and Apple's engineers are s bit more intelligent than you Mr. danBob. Sorry, the truth hurts but these dudes blew minds releasing the first 64bit SoC. First to utilize the A8 instruction set and they're designing low level graphic (Metal) programming to eliminate overhead of GL-ES. A 4MB buffer on the SoC and incredible optimization to its own OS.
Keep in mind ..,the development community is signficantly more active on iOS and they're making 85-90% of the defelopment 'money!' iOS users 'buy' apps. Spend money and enjoy their experience. Small display? 4;7" has been deemed perfect by MANY! And 5.5" is RIGHT there with. The largest available. Battery? Did you read the review? It's the Best of the Best. Period.
Before commenting, a suggestion. READ the article, review or 'book' before looking 'silly' in public!
Hemlocke - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Simple BOM breakdowns are not actually indicative of "less/more expensive." Apple's economies of scale are the envy of the tech world, and buying in great quantities and using SKUs across multiple lines brings the prices down for components. However, this takes a tremendous amount of capital, money that is spent fa in advance of receiving your goods, and generally your returns have to be enough to offset the money all of that capital is not making invested in some money-making vehicle.In mobile, basically two companies sell enough phones and tablets to do that, Apple and Samsung. Samsung sells more devices, but that is across many lines each year, with almost no common components. Thus, they aren't able to leverage economies of scale in the same manner as Apple, who makes two main lines each year (The newest iPhone and iPad), with secondary sales on the previous models, which still employ the internals introduced the previous year.
tl;dr: Samsung BOM is not the same as Apple BOM.
danbob999 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Actually Samsung shares a lot of components between different phones. And they do have economies of scale on the same level as Apple. This is not enough to explain why Apple phones are cheaper to make according to iFixit estimates.cupholder - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Still a cheaper phone. Quit deluding yourself.Jumangi - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Yea their phones are so cheap that they are the best selling smartphones in the world. Go away hater.extide - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
You do know that they are actually NOT the best selling smartphones in the world... right..?Hemlocke - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I'm pretty sure he meant the iPhone, which is the best-selling smartphone in the world, generation after generation.kirito - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I like to see your comment once samsung would release an all aluminum phone. so many excuses.kirito - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I like to see your comment once samsung would release an all aluminum phone. so many excuses.danbob999 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
They have. It's the Galaxy Alpha. I don't like this phone. I hope Samsung goes back to plastic.