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
WinterCharm - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Hahaha This guy has been running around and posting this comment on EVERY single iPhone review over the web.He's so desperate for attention, and so put off by the iPhone 6 that he feels the need to go about justifying his choice to love android.
darwinosx - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Everything you said is wrong of course and you sound like you have a personality disorder of some sort. I would seek therapy if I were you.Alexey291 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
He's deffo not correct but you certainly have always been on par with him when it comes to random bs :3option7 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Moron. 1080P is a waist on a small screen. All it does is increase the file size of every video you watch which then requires more RAM and mor memory.You wouldn't know this because you are one of the lemmings that jump off a cliff for overkill specs that cause other "back door" issues you are too stupid to recognize.
What other great products do you own? ...a Dodge Ram pickup? ...a Kia Soul? ...or are you a big fan of all those high quality products from "As Seen On TV"?
Maybe you should hold off on critiques of engineering, design and asthetics and learn how to dress so you can get a girlfriend someday. Here's a tip for you...don't use a coupon on your first date when you take her to Denny's. Good luck, Moron...
shtldr - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Wow, someone whose life revolves around cars and dating women calls someone else a moron?iphone4ever - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
You are the tool.Did you read the article (you do know how to read numbers and graphs I hope) and notice that iPhones totally dominate every display statistic and the Samsung S5 lags behind two prior generations of Apple iPhones and the iPhone 6 is so far ahead that Samsuck may never catch up.
I noticed you conveniently forgot about the 64bit Processor that runs at 1GHz lower speed on only two cores but is still faster than the Quad core junk that Android uses and oh yeah the battery life is significantly better and thats on a much smaller battery. Yeah no innovation there, Apple is really falling behind. In terms of memory the iPhone 6 comes in 16, 64, and 128GB - no need for some extra RAM modules because Samsuck decided to cheapen out and only include 32GB.
You Sumsuck troll just go away and play with your me too devices from the copy cat foreigners and come here and tell us when Samsunk/Android actually invents something significant or innovative - remember the tilt to scroll feature (HaHa what a piece of crap and they let be seen by the public). Ohh a bigger display no one would ever see that coming, except for Apple and the iPhone 1.
bigstrudel - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
This is a copy and pasted post from the iPhone 6 review.MODS please delete.
RandomReader - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
In contrast to you I very much enjoyed reading the differing viewpoint mentioned above, albeit the facts that it does display a healthy dislike for apple products in general and has been written by an obvious android fan-boy.Now what I don't like that much is your request to censor the aforementioned post and all related answers out of purely private motives.
Just because you deem something inappropriate and dispensable, it doesn't has to be that way, thus I politely ask you to respect the right of others to enjoy unhindered freedom of speech in general and the existence of other peoples personal opinions.
Hereby I politely ask you to abstain from censorship requests out of mainly egoistic, egocentric motivations, please respect other peoples rights and opinions.
As a side note, based on your behavior and the totalitarian nature of your requests, I suspect you to be either a member of some law enforcement entity or
an individual blessed with a pretty weak character, apparently unable to deal with differing viewpoints in a grown up, factual manner.
klutzak5 - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
Wow, just WOW. Most apple users probably earned enough money to pay the price differential while you were codifying your irrational hatred in your never-ending screed.Why so much bile? As much as you condemn apple users, its clear that your have tied your self-worth into your non-apple purchase to a much higher degree than any apple fan.
Grow up. Its pathetic.
akdj - Thursday, October 2, 2014 - link
There's really no where to start, other than your 'name' with your falsehoods and reek of 'Android Zealot/Evangelist' attempting to discredit today's BEST option for a 'phone' ...rather pocket computer on the maket. Period. Silly. Silly. Man. Apparently there were about ten million 'idiots' in the first 72 hours ....and probably triple that today that see things a bit differently. Including myself and I'm ambidextrous. Note 3 for my personal business. 5s as my personal phone. Still have the original Xoom and a pair of Nexus 7s collecting dust. Why? No one wants them. They're worth nothing.iPhones on the other hand? I've owned em all. I've got a pair of sixes on order. My wife wants the larger, 6+, myself the standard. You're so incredibly wrong about literally EVERYTHING you've said it's impossible to even get started without laughing myself to sleep.
Thanks for the incredible reviews. I've just finished the '+' addendum and I'm excited. Delivery date through my 'business rep' ordered the 'launch day' albeit in the afternoon is sometime between November 3-29th I think ...lol.
...and then the conspiracy theory. Apple is a business. If you had a million dollars you'd managed to save from your 'worldwide' business ...and one of the countries you do business in, your home country wants to tax it at a 40% rate to 'bring it home', WTF would YOU do? Forget s million. How about 200 billion? While still a helluva lot of cash, $80b is a big F'ING check to write to help our dumbass spend their government recover interest rates and bonds. Juvenile.
Get outta mom's basement
Let the spider go
Get some sunshine
Don't buy an iPhone. You'll 'enjoy' it and forget all about defending it. Too much fun 'using' it. And when you're done you can actually 'sell' it. Unlike ANY Android device I've owned! Not just sell it, but typically recover your subsidy payment, often up to 50% more selling locally! Try that with an LG G2, Note 2 or an S3/4. They gave me a hundred bucks when I turned my Note ones in and update to the Threes. AT&T did. No one else would
Record busting weekend. So much so, I ordered a couple for the business as we provide 17 employee phones, and I upgrade my wife and I. Ordered it launch day, lucky to get it before turkey day!
What. A. BUST!
Ignorance is bliss I guess. Unreal
PS. I forgot to see who did the review, but thank you again to the Team! Very well done, both reviews. As always, not rushed. Detailed. Objective and subjective as well, from the POV of a daily Android user made it all the more enjoyable as I guess I just don't 'get it'.
Generational maybe? We had baseballs and bats. Bikes and 'jumps' when I was a kid. I was in my second year of graduate school when I got my first massive brick for a cell phone. You could talk maybe an hour before you had to re-charge it. No texting. Monochrome (or whatever Orange on black is;)). And a buck a minute to chat. And I'm young. I think! @46 I'm astounded by these (obviously 'paid') schills spewing their bullshit after such an incredibly written and informative piece
To take an entire page and not ONCE reference the review or data. Just. Pure. Vitriol.
J