No single piece of consumer tech generates as much chatter as Apple's iPhones and this year the Cupertino firm has again given us two different models to chew over. While press shots of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus side by side make the former look a little on the small side, on it's own terms the iPhone 6 more than holds its own.
Like an oversized, single-piece iPhone 3GS, some 138.1mm high and 67mm wide, it's a sizeable upgrade on the last batch of iDevices. All curves and understated form, it manages to squeeze a 1.2-inch bigger screen into a body that's somehow thinner than its predecessor (there's 0.2mm in it). I've long maintained that the iPhone 4 to 5S “Block” era felt like a regression from the pocket-pleasing original design, and for me at least order is restored.
This aluminium execution is as elegant as an iPad Air but on a sleeker, smaller scale. No faux leather, no plastic parts - it's what a modern phone should look like. And despite all that metal, it weighs just 17g more than the last one. At 4.7 inches, the iPhone 6's screen is nicely bumped up to a more common standard of display size, which while at odds with Apple's previous take on things, is far more manageable than the knowingly excessive iPhone 6 Plus. The Retina HD's LED-backlist IPS panel provides clear, sharp images with excellent contrast.
Colours zing and a seemingly newly invented tech term called “dual-domain pixels” has been put to work on improving the wide-angle viewing. We don't know what they did, but it works, which is good times for sharing your media. Alas, where the iPhone 6 wins in manageability and functionality, it loses out a tad in resolution, with the 1334x750 display not full-HD like its statement sibling, or many of its Android rivals. Multi-touch interaction is as responsive as you'd wish, although the “oleophobic” coating is more of a sand bag rather than a wall against the inevitable flood of fingerprints.
Aside from the optical/digital image stabilisation divide, the iPhone 6 Plus in possession of the former and more pro-grade option to reduce motion blur in low lights, the cameras on both the new iPhones is incredibley similar -and familiar. As HTC has re-enforced with its “ultrapixel” redefinition, megapixels only judge the size of images anyhow, and are not reflective of quality.
Here the star is the refined autofocus, courtesy of a new “Focus Pixels” sensor, which helped produced some striking shots, while manual options are increased with the ridiculously easy to use expose controls. The front-facing 1.2-megapixel camera handles FaceTime and Skype effectively, although we clearly don't have enough friends to palpably notice the “improved face detection”, but a burst mode's there for selfie nuts or 720p HD recording for the YouTube enthusiasts. It's all housed in a typically uncomplicated app of swipes and taps.
While those used to the iPhone 5's proportions will take a while to adjust to the upsizing, the iPhone 6 is comfortably manageable with one hand and so doesn't need the variety of workarounds employed by the iPhone 6 Plus. That said, it will also let you tap into “Reachability” with a double-thumb of the TouchID ring around the home button bringing down the top app line for ease of access. And while Apple hasn't chosen to create landscape versions of its own apps, the options is apparently there for other app developers; we urge them to.
Elsewhere, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus share a lot of their core functionality, crafted as they were from the same vision. Importantly for phones to ring people on, the iPhone 6 purports to support more LTE bands than any other handset - 20, that is - and 4G on the EE network we tested on was certainly strong and consistent.
Wi-Fi, too, was without lapse, downloading games and movies quickly from iTunes, and AirPlay synced with Apple TV a charm. Similarly, the new M8 motion coprocessor adds a barometer to its combination of three-axis gyrometer, accelerometer and proximity sensor, to track elevation through air density (no, really). What the iPhone 6 and its oversized friend do do right now is usher in the rest of iOS 8, not the most visually different overhaul of an operating system in the world, but one filled with fine-tuning and promise.
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