Perhaps the device that got the most curiosity from Apple’s recent announcement is the iPhone 6 Plus. Apple not only introduced a bigger iPhone, it also paired it with another phablet iPhone. Check out our full review of the iPhone 6 Plus below.
Before we proceed, do read up on our review of the iPhone 6 here so you’d get a better perspective.
It is interesting that Apple did what it did on the iPhone 6 Plus. The move was so characteristically unlike Apple. The dual announcement of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus focused on display size, a feature that for the longest time was never a priority or concern for many years.
From left: iPod Touch, iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus
So many will say that the iPhone has caught up with the times. In some sense, that is true. But there’s a caveat.
Design and Construction.
Having been used to the rather small size of the iPhone 4/4s and iPhone 5/5s, the iPhone 6 Plus is humongously over-sized. Coming from a 4-inch 5s, the 6 Plus looks more like a smaller iPad Mini.
Apple made a number of design changes, starting with a more rounded corners and curved edge where the glass meets the metal frame. This gives the entire front panel a refined look that works like the device was entirely made up of thick glass, reminiscent of the iPhone 4.
The placement of the buttons have been slightly re-arranged with the power button now on the right side (to be easily reachable by the right thumb) and the volume controls along with the lock button on the left side.
The Lightning charging port, 3.5mm port, microphone, and speaker are at the bottom end. At the back is the 8MP rear camera that is flushed too close to the top left corner.
The rear camera also protrudes above the surface of the back panel and can be distracting and prone to scratching. It’s also too close to the corner that it could be frequently obstructed by the fingers when taking photos.
Those band-aid stripes at the back do look a bit distracting to the contiguous monochromatic and matte finish of the iPhone. We believe it’s a way for them to isolate the multiple internal radios and minimize signal interference from the metal body but the coating and tone doesn’t do justice to the elegant finish of the phone.
That and the placement of the protruding camera are so unlike Apple but we guess the designers and engineers had to make a compromise. As we mentioned in our iPhone 6 review, if Jobs were still alive, he would have gone nuts with these slight imperfections. It’s Tim Cook’s turn this time and that’s how they roll it.
Display.
For the longest time, Apple has marketed its Retina Display as among the best in the market. The sweet spot in pixel density for Retina Display was pegged at 326 ppi and that has been maintained since the iPhone 4 right up to the iPhone 5S and even the iPhone 6. That changed though with the iPhone 6 Plus where the pixel density was bumped up to 401 ppi after making the 5.5 inch screen sport a full HD 1080p resolution.
The glass panel at the front has a significantly curved edge that extends towards the side to meet the rounded frame. Suffice to say, it is the nicest display we’ve came across from any iPhone to date.
Just like the iPhone 6, the full HD display of the iPhone 6 Plus looks stunning, clear and crisp. We’re hoping the bigger 2,915mAh battery capacity would support the huge full HD display and maintain an acceptable battery life.
OS, UI and Apps.
With a large screen real estate, Apple has made the iPhone 6 Plus to allow for both a vertical and horizontal orientation. This is a first in many iPhone ever although a staple in any Android device for some time now. This is also the first UI execution that gave us a hint that Apple designed the iPhone 6 Plus to be used like a phablet.
With the largest screen comes an additional row of icons, giving it a total of 7 from the usual 6 on the iPhone 5 and 5S. It’s the same up-scaling they did with the iPhone 6 which retained the 16:9 aspect ratio which means apps and games will scale just fine on the device.
The iPhone 6 Plus came with iOS 8 right out of the box, a new mobile version announced alongside the new iPhone and released a couple of weeks back for older iOS devices like the iPhone 4S and newer.
The look and feel of iOS 8 didn’t depart far from iOS 7 and whatever bugs it may have introduced were already fixed by the latest release of version 8.0.2.
Nevertheless, the refinements introduced on iOS 8 were mostly found under the hood. The UI is basically still the same but Apple did a lot of changes that we don’t see cosmetically. There’s a tight integration with Mac OS X Yosemite so AirDrop to your Mac is now possible as well as doing SMS (iMessage) and voice calls.
There were a lot of tweaks done to the menus and shortcuts that made more sense and are more intuitive.
What we noticed and really appreciate is that the virtual keyboard has significantly increased in size due to the bigger screen real estate so we’re having much better accuracy and improved typing speed.
Camera and Multimedia.
Apple boasts that the iPhone 6 Plus’ camera sensor has a large 1.5-micron pixels and is paired with a lens that has a ƒ/2.2 aperture. On paper though, it’s not as impressive as the 2.0 micron and ƒ/2.2 aperture of the HTC One M8. The camera can also record 1080p full HD videos at a fast 60 fps, a super slow-mo of 240-fps at 720p, and time-lapse video.
The iPhone 6 Plus comes with an optical image stabilisation (OIS) which is not present in the smaller iPhone 6. This results to less-shaky handheld video recordings and pictures. In addition, we noticed a significant improvement on shooting speed, autofocus and really smooth recording of moving subjects (as shown in our sample video below).
Here are several sample photos taken with the iPhone 6 Plus:
As for gaming, the iPhone 6 Plus handled almost all games we played on it. We were able to play Infinity Blade and Asphalt 8 very smoothly using this smartphone. However, we were a bit puzzled that we experienced significant lags when playing Men vs. Machine, a peculiar issue that we also noticed on the iPhone 6. Audio was also really good and we’re pretty much contented with the quality and volume.
Performance and Benchmarks.
Apple has never been really a big fan of multi-core processors and huge amounts of RAM. So while we’re all accustomed to 8-core processors and 3GB of RAM for Android devices, Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus gets a modest dual-core A8 chip and 1GB of RAM. Of course, more RAM is better but iOS 8 works just fine even at 512MB so a 1GB upgrade on the iPhone 6 Plus should be more than enough.
PassMark Performance Mobile Test:
Benchmark | iPhone 6 Plus | iPhone 6 | iPhone 5S | iPhone 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 5,880 | 5,561 | 5,069 | 2,800 |
| CPU | 45,833 | 45,703 | 36,024 | 17,568 |
| Memory | 5,890 | 3,842 | 4,146 | 2,788 |
| Disk | 24,784 | 26,324 | 13,266 | 10,213 |
| 2D | 2,762 | 2,948 | 2,462 | 875 |
| 3D | 1,993 | 1,988 | 1,929 | 1,647 |
The table above shows the benchmark score of the iPhone 6 Plus on each individual category and as a total score compared to previous models like the iPhone 6, iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5. If we based it on the benchmark scores, the A8 chip got a 27% CPU performance upgrade and 12% in graphics (2D). This somewhat backs up the claim by Apple that their A8 chip got a 25% gain in performance over the A7 from the iPhone 5S.
It’s not really much in terms of performance but further OS optimizations could add to that increase.
We also tried running AnTuTu Benchmark for iOS so we can compare to other chips from MediaTek and Qualcomm but the test always gets stuck at 59% when running the Memory test.
Call Quality, Connectivity and Battery Life.
Call quality on the iPhone 6 is very good with clear and crisp audio when making voice calls. Signal reception for cellular and WiFi are also at par with the iPhone 5S. The new A8 chip supports up to 20 LTE bands which allows it to be compatible with more networks on different countries. There’s very little to no concern whether our local telcos (Globe, Sun and Smart) are compatible with iPhone 6 Plus units released in other countries.
This is also the first time Apple incorporated an NFC chip into the iPhone. This is to support their effort at mobile payments via a service that’s called Apple Pay. Unfortunately, Apple Pay is only supported in the US and there’s a very slim chance that it will be available in the Philippines.
The NFC chip is also locked to Apple Pay so there’s no way to use it for pairing with other NFC-enabled devices.
Our standard battery bench puts the iPhone 6 at 11 hours running an HD video in a continuous loop at 50% brightness and 0% volume. That’s a good score compared to other flagship handsets but once we use the device on regular daily use, we managed to get about 14-15 hours with WiFi turned on. Of course, battery life will heavily depend on each individual’s usage behavior.
Conclusion.
So yes, the iPhone 6 Plus is legitimately a phablet. That’s why there’s a lot of noise regarding this year’s release since Apple has resisted even going the way of major flagship device in the range of 4.7 to 5.0 inches, then suddenly they made a sizable shift to 5.5.
It just feels a bit weird that we’d see an iPhone this big. In any case, this is another experiment that Apple is testing to see if they’d be able to push some more numbers in their smartphone market share. Perhaps, this could finally be the time the iPhone 6 Plus can do what the iPhone 5C failed last year — attract more users.
Either you will like the iPhone 6 Plus because of its size and performance or you will avoid it because it’s a bit bulky and unwieldy to use and perhaps just settle for the iPhone 6.
The iPhone 6 Plus is not yet officially released in the Philippines and could take a while (probably a November/December release) but several online stores have started offering it (check out Widget City for the latest listing and prices).
Apple iPhone 6 Plus specs:
5.5-inch IPS LCD @ 1920×1080 pixels, 401ppi
Apple A8 1.4GHz dual-core Cyclone processor
PowerVR GX6450 quad-core GPU
1GB RAM
16GB, 64GB, 128GB internal storage
HPSA+/LTE 150Mbps
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band
Bluetooth 4.0 LE
NFC, Apple Pay
8MP rear camera, dual-tone LED flash
1080p@60fps, 720p@240fps
1.2MP front facing camera
Fingerprint sensor
GPS with aGPS, GLONASS
iOS 8
Li-Po 2915mAh battery
172 grams (weight)
158.1 x 77.8 x 7.1 mm (dimensions)
What we liked about the iPhone 6 Plus:
* Large full HD display
* Good performance
* Impressive camera performance
* Option for 128GB internal storage
* Touch ID and Fingerprint sensor
What we did not like:
* Very expensive retail price
* Crippled NFC capability
* A bit unweildy to hold
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