Apple iPhone 6 Review

Introduction

Two years ago, Apple’s venerable iPhone received one of the biggest design changes in its history. Previous to the unveiling of the iPhone 5, all other iPhones before it featured 3.5-inch screens – a large screen size for a phone back in 2007, but hardly the stuff that contended with the more spacious screen sizes of other modern, top-tiered smartphones. Still, for the many fans of the iPhone, they were ecstatic to see the increase.During Steve Jobs’ reign, he rebuffed the idea of putting an even larger sized screen in the iPhone. As the phablet segment gained popularity in recent years, however, many owners of the iPhone urged the company to produce one with a BIG screen, but it never came to fruition. Well folks, the company that redefined the modern smartphone is making right with its latest model, the iPhone 6 – one that bears a new design and larger, 4.7” screen to combat the onslaught of flagship phones from the Android side.

Naturally, there’s a lot of buzz riding on this phone. Outfitted with several new upgrades, the iPhone 6 also receives an updated experience in the form of iOS 8 as well. Arguably the biggest launch for Apple to date, can the iPhone 6 continue Apple’s dominance in the market?

The package contains:

• Lightning cable
• Wall charger
• Apple sticker decals
• Get Started Guide

Design

Exhibiting all of the hallmark qualities of an iPhone, like its premium choice of materials, solid construction, and iconic looks, this year’s model is quite frankly a larger sized iPhone.

Sporting a totally new redesign, the iPhone 6 boasts all of the hallmark qualities of an iPhone to keep up with the line’s prestige legacy – while still laying claim to its iconic looks. Naturally, there’s the overall increase in its footprint, which is what’s most profound with its design. Indeed, it’s more spaced out, but it’s still relatively easier to grasp than most of today’s flagships. On top of that, Apple is able to shave off even more of its fame to an impressive thinness of 0.27-inches – besting its predecessor’s mark of 0.3-inches.

Premium has always been something associated with the iPhone, so that’s something intact here with the iPhone 6, since its unibody frame is constructed out of aluminum. And just like last year, the same color options are presents – space gray, silver, and gold. From afar, it’s undeniably an iPhone, but upon closer inspection, there are several new changes that give it a different look. For starters, it follows the design language first introduced to us by the iPad mini – where it’s more rounded on its sides. Due to this, we find it more comfortable to hold than the chamfered beveled edge of the iPhone 5s.Apple has been making a point about “continuity” with its design approach, where everything seems to follow a seamless pattern, but we’re a little shocked because of how the camera lens in rear interrupts the design’s continuity. Let’s be honest folks. The iPhone 6 is one meticulously crafted, beautiful looking smartphone that’s a cut above those plastic-bodied ones, but at the end of the day, even with the switch with its design language, it looks like an iPhone – a larger one than before to be exact.

Attributed to its larger size, the power button has moved away from its traditional location on the upper right corner of the phone, and is now placed along the right edge – a fitting change, since it’s easier to access. As for the volume controls and silence switch, which are still in their same old spots on the left edge, they might not jut out as much as before, but they’re still relatively easy to distinguish and operate. Notably different is the size of the volume buttons, which are elongated now, in order to accommodate the iPhone 6’s skinnier frame. Meanwhile, other familiar items, like the Lightning docking power, 3.5mm headset jack, speaker, earpiece, and microphones are found in their usual locations.

Underneath the display, we have the phone’s iconic home button, which has the Touch ID biometric touch sensor incorporated into it. Still rocking the same responsiveness and easy unlocking operation as before, it’s still somewhat mind-boggling to know that it’s the best implementation around.

Apple’s iPhones have always been known to take spectacular photos, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to find that the iPhone 6 is packing some new gear. Even though its iSight camera doesn’t increase in count, a decent 8-megapixel sensor with a two-toned dual-LED flash, Apple introduces a new technology called “Focus Pixel”, which we’ll expand more on later in the camera section of the review. Likewise, they’ve opted to stick the iPhone 6 with the same 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera.

 

Drag the picture or use the keyboard arrows to rotate the phone.
Double click or press keyboard Space to zoom in/out

Display

The iPhone 6’s 4.7-inch 750 x 1334 Retina Display continues to deliver high-quality results, like its potent brightness and superb color accuracy, but we wish for something higher in resolution.

Playing into its main rivals, Apple has increased the size of the iPhone’s display to a more contemporary mark of 4.7-inches. Combined with its resolution of 750 x 1334 pixels, it delivers a very Retina display pixel density figure of 326 ppi. Sure, the this doesn’t turn heads as much as the quadHD resolution of the LG G3 for example, but at the end of the day, we’re still able to make out fine details with very few issues. Still, a part of us wished for the iPhone 6 to come to the party with a resolution of more than 430ppi to match its rivals.Apple continues again to ensure that the panel is a high-quality one. Based on IPS LCD technology, which is protected by a layer of Gorilla Glass 3, the display lives up to the hallmark qualities of past iPhone displays. First and foremost, it’s super easy to view outdoors with the sun presents, thanks in part to its potent brightness output of 606 nits – a modest step up over its predecessor’s 587 nits mark, but an excellent result nonetheless.

Once again, too, the Retina Display present here is one of the most accurate when it comes to reproducing colors. With a color temperature of ~7100 K, there’s a slight cooler tone to the screen. From the looks of it, the panel in here closely matches its predecessor when it comes to color accuracy. Yes, there are very few minor differences, but for the most part, the display here is pretty darn excellent at producing accurate colors. In addition, viewing angles are pretty fantastic too, as it maintains its clarity at even the widest angles.

Aside from a phone’s design, the other main thing to catch our attention from an initial glance is the phone’s display. On one hand, we’re ecstatic to see an increase in size to make the iPhone 6 competitive, but on the other, we’re a little disappointed by Apple’s decision to sit behind the pack with a lower resolution panel. Its saving grace, however, is the high-quality panel that it uses.

Display measurements and quality

• Screen measurements
• Viewing angles
• Color charts

	Maximum brightness (nits)Higher is better	Minimum brightness (nits)Lower is better	Contrast Higher is better	Color temperature (Kelvins)	Gamma	Delta E rgbcmy Lower is better	Delta E grayscale Lower is better
Sony Xperia Z3	713 (Excellent)	4 (Excellent)	1:1148 (Good)	10324 (Poor)	2.55	6.43 (Average)	9.28 (Poor)
Apple iPhone 6	606 (Excellent)	7 (Good)	1:1563 (Excellent)	7162 (Good)	2.23	3.51 (Good)	3 (Good)
Apple iPhone 5s	587 (Excellent)	5 (Excellent)	1:960 (Average)	7351 (Good)	2.18	3.41 (Good)	3.44 (Good)
HTC One (M8)	490 (Good)	16 (Poor)	1:1362 (Excellent)	7182 (Good)	2.11	4.33 (Average)	4.82 (Average)
Sony Xperia Z2	458 (Good)	16 (Poor)	1:1329 (Excellent)	6909 (Excellent)	2.59	4.41 (Average)	2.95 (Good)
LG G3	455 (Good)	9 (Average)	1:997 (Average)	7099 (Good)	2.26	3.60 (Good)	2.86 (Good)
Samsung Galaxy S5	442 (Good)	2 (Excellent)	unmeasurable (Excellent)	8183 (Poor)	2.25	5.08 (Average)	7.38 (Average)
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact	436 (Good)	3 (Excellent)	1:1315 (Excellent)	9964 (Poor)	2.67	6.03 (Average)	8.96 (Poor)

Interface and Functionality

iOS 8 might not see a huge overhaul with is visuals, but it has surely been outfitted with several new notable features that really balances out its functionality to almost the same level as Android – though, it’s still simple and easy to operate at its core.

Besides a few hardware upgrades, last year’s iPhone was most noteworthy for Apple’s decision to finally update the iOS experience. Going with a flatter design philosophy, iOS 7 undoubtedly sprinkled a refreshing change of scenery to the otherwise antiquated visuals and functionality of the platform. With this year’s offering, though, iOS 8 moves in a forward direction by throwing in several enhancements to the experience – making it a more capable and complete platform in the process.

Well, the one area we don’t see any major design alterations is in the interface. In fact, you’ll barely notice some of the minor changes, but they do exist! Getting to the iOS 8 homescreen, all of the familiarities are still present, like its grid-like layout, folder organization, and bottom launcher. With the unveiling of the updated software, Apple throws in a handful of new background wallpapers – though, we’re a bit disappointed that they didn’t include any new dynamic ones.

So the visuals are pretty much unchanged with this latest iteration of iOS, but it sees yet another degree of updates to its functionality. Without further ado, let’s jump in and talk about all of the new stuff with iOS 8!

Notification Center

Enhancing what it populates beyond the local stuff in the phone, like our contacts or apps, Spotlight Search has been improved with iOS 8 to offer recommendations/suggestions from a bevy of places. We already know how useful it is for searching local content, but Apple has extended its searching scope to sniffing out songs/albums on iTunes, various web sites, and Wikipedia results. We dig the added functionality, seeing that eliminates our need to launch the web browser.

Siri

Speaking of queries and searching, Siri has been taught a few new tricks as well. First and foremost, you can make her (or him) listen to your input with a simple voice trigger – "Hey, Siri..." followed by your question or command. There's a catch, however. The said voice command works only when the iOS device is plugged into a charger or after Siri has been already launched.

Yelling "Hey, Siri..." while on a home screen or with the phone locked wouldn't do anything. That's a limitation we weren't expecting given the fact that a number of Android phones already support always-on voice commands. Nevertheless, it is better to have the "Hey, Siri" trigger working as described than to not have the feature at all.

Always the one to become smarter and wiser with each major software upgrade, iOS 8’s introduction yields Shazam integration as well with Siri. Naturally, it comes in handy when we’re stumped with some kind of song playing in the car. Besides that, Siri continues to populate relevant responses and searches – while also amusing us with some of her/his witty remarks.