The iPhone 6 Plus Mini-Review: Apple's First Phablet
by Joshua Ho on September 30, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iOS
- iPhone 6 Plus
Battery Life
One of the big draws of the larger form factor is battery life. Due to fundamental scaling issues, a bigger phone should be able to achieve greater battery life than a small one. This is because a smartphone's PCB generally remains constant in size, so it becomes an increasingly smaller proportion of the overall device size. This leaves increasingly large areas where batteries fill in the gap. In order to quantify just how big of a difference this makes when going from 4.7" to 5.5", we turn to our standardized battery life test suite. For those unfamiliar with our testing, the display is calibrated to 200 nits and all background tasks are disabled in order to ensure that only the foreground task is active in our tests.
As we previously discussed, the iPhone 6 Plus performs quite admirably in the WiFi web browsing test. As expected, there's a healthy bump over the iPhone 6, but it's not quite a massive leap as a larger battery size might suggest.
Once again, we see a similar pattern with the LTE web browsing test. Since both phones are based on the same platform, it makes sense that their results track quite closely together as we're only scaling display and battery size within the context of these tests.
However, the web browsing test is a mostly display-bound test, even if there is an SoC efficiency aspect that can make a significant difference. In order to better test SoC efficiency and get an idea of the dynamic range that a phone has in battery life, we turn to our compute-bound tests. Unfortunately, Basemark OS II stops the test too early due to low battery notifications in iOS, so we cannot use that test for a proper comparison to other phones.
As shown in these charts, the iPhone 6 Plus manages to sustain a significant boost in battery life when compared to the iPhone 6, and performance is almost identical as well. It seems that the iPhone 6 Plus begins to throttle towards the end of the test simply because it has more time to generate heat rather than any real difference in cooling, as skin temperatures were also around 43C on the iPhone 6 Plus in this test. It's also important to note that the iPhone 6 Plus is rendering at 2208x1242 internally in order to keep proper scaling with the 163 points per inch system that iOS has, which accounts for part of the performance delta.
Overall, battery life on the iPhone 6 Plus ranges between about 20% higher to 40% higher depending on the balance of display power and SoC/baseband power in any given situation. Heavily display-bound situations will be closer to the 20% higher figure while more SoC-bound tasks will tend toward 40% or even higher. Purely idle situations should see even greater improvements as any situation where the display is off will see linear scaling with battery size.
Charge Time
Charge time is one of the key metrics for getting a holistic picture of battery life, as it's impossible to really understand whether a phone will be able to stay mobile as needed without considering recharging. In some cases such as a trade show or travel, it doesn't matter if a phone lasts 20% longer than the competition if it loses all the time gained in time spent on a charger. In order to test this, power is tracked from when the phone is connected to the charger to when it reaches the lowest power draw state on the AC adapter.
Unfortunately, the included charger is the same 5W charger that we've seen for years now. As a result, the iPhone 6 Plus is constrained by the relatively low maximum power that it can put out. Those that wish for faster charging should look into getting an iPad A/C adapter as the iPhone 6 Plus will charge faster when connected to it.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
191 Comments
View All Comments
nerd1 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Also current android flagship (with snapdragon 805) is FASTER than iPhone 6+ in terms of multithread load (which anandtech never tests for some curious reason), and their browsing performance is on par with iPhone 6+ when tested with their STOCK browser (yet anadtech only tests with chrome, which is 2X slower)Camera is simply no match. Take a look at DXOMark individual scores. iPhone 6/6+ has both lower acuity (resolution) and higher noise than galaxy S5. It got high score for autofocus, which *curiously* made the total averaged score to the top.
And apple devices are suffering greatly from lack of memory, which is even worse with 64 bit address set (which eats up 20~30% more memory). A simple test is opening multiple tabs in safari and going through them. You will see them refresh ALL THE TIME due to lack of memory.
I know iDiots can't understand this and won't listen anyway though.
ninjaroll - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Sorry, what did you say? I'm too busy enjoying using my phone and getting things done.GigaMonster - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Oh we understand your cycling through tabs "test". We just know it's meaningless because it's just a dumb demo test. It doesn't reflect normal daily usage, is not a "user story" that needs to be fulfilled, and is a waste of our time to sit there cycling through tabs when we cod just be getti stuff done.val580 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
IPhone 6+ design and feel in hand is similar to galaxy note 2.The screen size and bezel are also the same.
Apple is stuck in 2012 and don't care because peope buy the product
Mugur - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
The conclusion that 6+ is the best phablet out there is simply ridiculous. It's like saying that the best Android tablet is HTC One Max.6+ has no phablet merit other than the screen size.
KuyaMarkEduard - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
WOW!alibis after excuses after exculpations!
"Unfortunately, the included charger is the same 5W charger that we've seen for years now. As a result, the iPhone 6 Plus is constrained by the relatively low maximum power that it can put out. Those that wish for faster charging should look into getting an iPad A/C adapter as the iPhone 6 Plus will charge faster when connected to it."
how-much did the rotten fruit company pay you for this review?
I know you won't reply to this, but just for the sake of argument, granting that you will, and you say that you're not making any excuses whatsoever, when Galaxy note 4 an Edge come to your hands for review, will you also defend all of the possible flaws that you may be able to discover? and also for the massive features and capabilities of the two note devices, for the sake of utmost fairness, oh well, if you really are in the first-place, and you indeed insist, will you also praise them?, and say like this, or that feature is awesome or something to that effect? or you just say that this, or that, is nothing compare to your product, but a bunch of gimmicks!
…Just a piece of advice, if you care to listen anyway, whatever you're gonna say when that time finally arrives, don't be too obvious...…
Parhel - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Not sure what you're getting at, really. They were calling them out on the fact that the included wall adapter sucks, and that you can charge your phone twice as fast with an iPad adapter. A lot of iPhone users (most?) already know that and buy aftermarket A/C adapters. I know I do. It only changes the recharge time, not the performance of the phone or the benchmarks or anything else.Michał - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
I very much welcome the 6+. My eyesight is not what it was and I don't like the portrait size keyboard on my 5. Just a little too small. I do feel that the many senior users of iPhones will welcome this phablet model and that the large size of this segment of the market is being overlooked in many reviews. A mature market will have three sizes of phones. Small for girls, children and those with small hands. Middle size for most of the market and large size for those who have eyesight and accessibility needs short of disability. Many people like me have waited for this Iphone phablet..KuyaMarkEduard - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Allright then. however, if you could wait, just a little bit longer, you then may be able to choose between Samsung's Galaxy Note4, or the Note Edge; whichever you like, and it would certainly get, a lot more of your money's worth..., just too many to enumerate!ninjaroll - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
Thanks KuyaMarkEduard@samsung.com!!