New also to this generation is the all-metal back casing, which replaces the glass top and bottom panels with thin connecting seams instead. This makes for a more unified look when you turn the phone around, and something that gets closer to the unbroken single plane of the iPad mini and iPad Air’s rear shell.
The Space Gray version I tested benefits very much from this unbroken look, and the front of the device is no less impressive. The iPhone 6 is a much more comfortable device to hold vs. Phone 4, 4S, 5 and 5s, all of which preferred straight edges and right angles to the 6’s sloping curves. Its rounded edges call to mind the iPhone 3GS and earlier, in fact - and its closest design analogue might be the metal-backed original iPhone, which also had edges that rounded to a flat rear shell.
Regardless of its inspirations, it fits more naturally in your grip, and will rest there more comfortably for longer periods, too. The rounded edges all along the display help contribute to the near-seamless look that Apple was going for, but they also serve an ergonomic purpose. If Apple has faltered anywhere with design, it might be that protruding iSight camera lens on the back, which sticks out a tiny fraction of an inch thicker than the rest.
Apple’s new A8 chip is the powerhouse behind the iPhone 6, and it delivers the kind of performance you’d expect from cutting edge processor technology. The A8 strains the limits of what you’d think was possible in terms of overall device speed and responsiveness, with the entire user experience feeling perceptibly quickened. It’s one of those situations where you don’t realize how the device you were using (iPhone 5s in my case) could get any better in terms of general speed, until you pick up the new device.
The iPhone 6 deals better with iOS 8’s various animations, transparency and other visual effects as a result, and can handle powering that larger, high-resolution display without breaking a sweat. It can handle more powerful games, and best of all, delivers better battery life even when tackling visually intensive tasks.
Plus it enables new imaging features that really make Apple’s mobile camera far and away the best in the business, which we’ll discuss in more detail below. Apple has also improved the motion coprocessor it introduced last year, which is a dedicated activity tracking chip. The M8 in the iPhone 6 offers continuous monitoring of not only accelerometer, compass and gyroscope data, but also introduces monitoring of information fed from the new barometer for determining changes in elevation.
The M8 can also detect walking, running and driving activity. In practice, using it to monitor and display my daily distance travelled, steps and flights climbed worked extremely well, and didn’t seem to have a significant negative effect on my battery. One of the big new features of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is their ability to use Touch ID, the new Secure Element for storing payment info, and NFC to perform easy, contactless payments. They’re not currently available for use anywhere in my vicinity, and Apple isn’t launching the Apple Pay functionality until October anyway.
Health is new to iOS 8, and in the iPhone 6 it’s already become a staple of my daily app check routine. The iPhone 6 packs a higher resolution display than the iPhone 5s, with 1334 x 750 resolution. It also allows for deeper blacks, and uses something called “dual-domain” pixels to make it so that colors still show true regardless of the angle at which you view the phone.
Display Zoom will let you use this extra space to simply expand the size of individual interface elements and text, which is great for users who have vision issues or who simply find themselves squinting at their phone too often. This is truly one of Apple’s most amazing technical achievements overall - it looks like a placeholder high-res print image placed expertly just behind the glass, until it springs to life.
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