Review: iPhone 6

Note:

The iPhone I bought is the iPhone 6 (not the Plus) in space grey with 64GB of memory.

iOS 8 and iPhone 6 will be reviewed separately. This is due to the fact that iOS 8 can also may installed on iPhone 4S and above.

Durability:

As far as I can tell, this is a very durable phone. I had it for a few days before I decided to buy a screen protector for it. In that time, the screen did not get scratched at all. To put that in perspective, I had an iPhone 4S before this. The day I got the phone, I put a screen protector on it. A couple of weeks ago I removed the screen protector and got a scratch on the screen within a day.

As for the torture tests, the iPhone 6 performs well and exceeds all iPhones before them. See the tests here.

Now it is time to address the elephant in the room. There have been reports of the iPhone 6 getting bent while it’s in your pocket for extended periods of time. Apple has neither confirmed or denied these claims. I don’t know. It could be people being too rough on their phones or the claims could be true. All I can tell you is my iPhone is okay. There is no bend. But I am not rough on my phones. Nor do I have skinny jeans in which the phone would be put under stress while in my pocket. There are also millions of iPhone 6s out there and only a handful of reports. This type of stuff happens with all product launches.

Battery Life:

The battery life on the iPhone 6 fairs better than my iPhone 4S. I was able to get through each day with about 30% battery left. This was under fairly heavy use.  Under heavy use my iPhone 4S wouldn’t even get a full day. So this is a welcome improvement for me.

Design/Quality:

The designs of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are great. The case is now made of a single molded piece of aluminium and, the sides of the phone are curved and meet the glass of the phone almost seamlessly. Also, the glass on the phone is curved down on all edges. I feel like this was done to make the phone feel better in your hand. At no time using this phone did it feel too wide or weird while holding it. The screen size of the iPhone 6 is up to 4.7 inches (up from 4 inches of the iPhone 5) and the iPhone 6 Plus is 5.5 inches. The iPhone 6 is only 6.9mm thick while the iPhone 6 Plus is 7.1 mm thick. This is very slim. The extra size of the phone gives you an extra row of apps on the screen. It is now up from 6 to 7 (this includes the static row on the bottom).

The volume buttons have been stretched out to be more rectangular. My guess is this was done because the phone is now way too slim to make use of the circular buttons. The power button has moved to the side of the phone. This was a very good design decision as it makes for one-handed use on these larger phones. Leaving the power button on top of the phone would have made it awkward to use in one hand. All of the buttons are more solid and “clicky” than on previous iPhone. This gives this phone more of a feel of quality.

Memory comes in three sizes: the base 16GB, the 64GB and the 128GB. For the life of me I cannot think of why they skipped the 32GB. The 32GB should have been the stock iPhone memory size. 16GB is just not enough memory.

The camera stays at 8MP but employs a thing called Focus Pixels to speed up the focus time. This camera is fast. It also bumps up the slow-mo record speed to 240fps. The effect is stunning.

The size of the iPhone 6 is where I have one of my two gripes about the design of the phone. The phone is much bigger than I am used to. Under normal circumstances, I would have trouble reaching the top row of icons (or the back icon on most apps) with one hand. But iOS 8 has a clever fix in which you double tap the home button. This slides the entire view on the screen down so that you can reach the those apps you couldn’t before.

My other gripe is the lens for the camera. It sticks out of the phone about 1 mm. Normally this would not be a problem. But when you set this phone on a flat surface, it rocks slightly. This is the only reason I am considering buying a case for this phone. The case would get rid of this problem fairly easily.

Conclusion:

Besides the size and design, there is not a whole lot new with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. There is a faster processor and better camera, but this equals out to be one great phone. I love my iPhone 6, but I couldn’t imagine using an iPhone 6 Plus. The iPhone 6 is the largest I would want my smartphone.