That's normal change in the smartphone world. The real question is whether it's as great as the mania suggests. I really like the iPhone 6 as a device. First, the iPhone 6 is simply a pleasure to hold. The wraparound aluminum is almost velvety, and the glass front melds seamlessly into it.
The screen is bright and colorful, without crossing the line into garish as some Android phones do (Galaxy S5, I'm talking to you). There are a few other nice-feeling smartphones, like the HTC One M8, but the iPhone 6 is a cut above. Under the hood are Apple's new chips: the A8 processor and M8 motion coprocessor, as well as a souped-up graphics subsystem.
The iPhone 6 has as much power as some PCs, and you can feel the better performance. The screen is brilliant and bright, moreso than Apple's previous iPhones, whose images were crisp and true but a bit subdued. In the iPhone 6, Apple has increased brightness without making the colors artificially garish, in that unnatural, pumped-up "Miami Vice" style that Samsung favors. It works great for navigation while driving with the new Siri hands-free mode (yes, Apple Maps is a lot better now).
Apple says the iPhone 6's viewing angle is wider -- well, yes and no. It's a tad wider than my iPhone 4's viewing angle, but not meaningfully more. What's different: At an extreme viewing angle, the iPhone 6 retains most of its brightness and color accuracy, whereas older iPhones dimmed and the colors shifted darker at wide viewing angles. The iPhone 6's cameras have been upgraded. They're basically as good as SLRs and camcorders, but that's par for the course in high-end smartphones.
One interesting change Apple made is adding support for high-FPS, slo-mo video capture, a trick sure to be popular. In my tests, it worked great in natural light but not in artificial lighting, such as a room illuminated by halogen or LEDs. At least in LED- and halogen-lit spaces, I got a very unpleasant strobe effect when shooting in slo-mo. The other big internal change is support for NFC (near-field communications) that will enable contactless mobile payments in the forthcoming Apple Pay service.
Apple Pay doesn't work yet — an iOS 8 update planned for October is required, as are Apple Pay-compatible sales terminals in stores — so I could not test it. NFC may have other uses in the future, but for now Apple is tying it to Apple Pay to ensure security.
The iPhone 6 is not perfect, of course. Apple moved the Sleep/Wake switch from the top of the iPhone to the right side, so you can reach it with your thumb when holding the device. But it means you can't quickly dismiss an incoming call during a meeting by double-pressing the button in your shirt pocket — you have to pull the phone out of your pocket to dismiss the call.
I've found no alternative quick-dismiss method on the iPhone 6 for those of us who carry our phones in our shirt pockets. Apple should add a timed option for Do No Disturb so that we can silence the phone in a meeting but not leave it silenced through forgetting to turn it back on, as is now required.
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