Review and Movie: With Big Fresh iPhones, It’s What’s Inwards That Counts
The iPhone six Plus and iPhone six rival the competition in sheer size. But when it comes to taking advantage of those thicker screens, Molly Wood says, Apple’s fresh phones don’t always measure up.
By Rebekah Fergusson and Vanessa Perez on Publish Date September 16, 2014. Photo by Jim Wilson/The Fresh York Times. Witness in Times Movie »
Fatter. Fatter. Thicker.
The fresh Apple iPhones going on sale this week, the iPhone six and the iPhone six Plus, have crisper screens, swifter processors and sharper cameras.
And, as you might have heard, they are also fatter than previous iPhones — the six Plus by a long shot — joining the stampede toward thicker handsets.
But after almost a week of attempting the phones, it became clear that the hardware was not the best part of the package. In its quest to supply thicker phones to a market clamoring for them, Apple has made one phone that is actually a little too puny and one that’s a little too big. (Apple lent The Fresh York Times an iPhone six and iPhone six Plus under the condition that a review would be not be published before Tuesday at nine p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.)
The best part of the fresh phones is actually the fresh software inwards, which is available for some older models, too, commencing on Wednesday. The software, iOS 8, combines some of the advanced features of Android with Apple’s ease of use and reliability.
Because of the software, it’s hard to see many iPhone fans straying from Apple, even if they don’t buy fresh iPhones instantaneously.
The iPhone six is a Four.7-inch device, up from four inches on the iPhone five and 5S. It’s a little broader than those phones, too.
Those dimensions make it slightly smaller than the top Android and Windows devices on the market, helping it fit lightly in jeans pockets. Compared with a Samsung Galaxy S5 or the HTC One (M8), tho’, the iPhone six screen feels constrained. The iPhone six starts at $200 with a fresh contract.
Comparing Fresh iPhone Sizes
Apple’s fresh phones cater to a growing appetite among consumers for thicker screens.
Samsung Galaxy S5
Samsung Galaxy S5
The iPhone six Plus is a behemoth. It has the same size display as the LG G3, at Five.Five inches, but is significantly taller. It’s longer even than the Galaxy Note Trio, which has a Five.7-inch display. It starts at $300 with a fresh contract.
Both the six and six Plus get thinner, flatter and more rounded shapes than their predecessors, losing the squared-off sides on the more latest models. The effect looks sleek, but feels slimy. Pulling down seems imminent as you open up your thumb across the larger screens.
Apple takes some petite steps to mitigate the finger spread with a feature called Reachability, which lets you touch (not press) the home button twice to shift the screen down to the bottom half of the display.
The feature works nicely for one-handed scrolling and finding app icons, but it doesn’t do much else. If you’re in an email, for example, you can’t get access to any deeds like Reply or Archive.
Apple could have taken a cue from other makers of so-called phablets (a blend of the words “phone” and “tablet”) and come up with powerful ways to take advantage of those thicker screens.
For example, the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy Note four will let users resize app windows using a finger or stylus and view numerous windows at the same time on its Five.7-inch display, as on a desktop computer. The Five.5-inch LG G3 lets you open two apps at once and resize them as you like.
The iPhones do include some tricks created for fatter phones, like a zoom feature that lets you subtly increase the size of app icons and text in native apps.
And when you turn the phones sideways, into landscape mode, the keyboard in the built-in apps like Mail and Messages has more options — a microphone, undo key, period and comma and others on the iPhone 6, and even more on the iPhone six Plus, like dedicated copy and paste keys.
Those extra iPhone six Plus keys vanish if you choose the zoomed display, however. And the iPhone six Plus is so big that in landscape mode, I had a hard time reaching the keys to type.
Even the built-in Apple keyboard doesn’t get any extra keys when holding the phone upright, the way the Samsung and LG keyboards include number keys above the letters, and period and comma keys.
As for the features that people love about their iPhones, they only get better. The iPhone six cameras, for example, are outstanding.
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Both rear-facing cameras have fresh sensors that supply quicker autofocus, better face detection and the capability to capture high-resolution panoramas. The swifter concentrate is instantly demonstrable, even in casual use.
The iPhone six Plus in particular uses optical photo stabilization to supply better photos in low light and reduce overall jiggle and blur. Sadly, that nice feature is not on the iPhone 6.
And filmmakers are swooning over the iPhones’ high-definition movie, swifter framework rates (which lead to smoother movie) and higher-quality slow-motion capture. Cinematic movie stabilization helps slick out movie taken while moving and a time lapse mode snaps a shot every 2nd or so and stitches them together.
Of course, all the movies and photos look excellent on the fatter screens, especially the iPhone six Plus. For camera buffs, that fatter phone is likely to be a must-have.
Call quality on the fresh phones is excellent and I found battery life on the smaller iPhone six to be astounding. I went almost two utter days without a charge. Battery life on the iPhone six Plus is more like a day of constant use and not much more, but that’s not terrible on a phone that size.
Apple’s Cook Unveils Thicker iPhones
Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, and Philip W. Schiller, a senior vice president, introduced two fresh iPhones on Tuesday with sharper and larger displays.
By Reuters on Publish Date September 9, 2014. Photo by Jim Wilson/The Fresh York Times.
The real magic, tho’, happens because of Apple’s fresh operating system.
The iOS eight software doesn’t look greatly different, but many refinements make it more powerful and pliable. Some of the features catch up to competitors and some are totally fresh.
The upgrade adds iCloud Drive, for example, which lets you more lightly share documents across devices, as you can with Dropbox or Google Drive. A Family Sharing feature will let you share your purchased books, movies, music and some apps with up to six family members, so they don’t have to log in to your account to witness a movie or use an app you have purchased.
After OS X Yosemite, the fresh operating system for Macs, is released in October, Apple’s Continuity feature will let you view incoming text messages across all devices, forearm off documents inbetween a phone and computer and send a text or make a call from your Mac.
Smaller improvements — expiring messages and voice memos, Spotlight searches that include web results, and recently used contacts that display up when you double-press the home button to switch inbetween or close apps — add up to a refined mobile OS.
Some of the features aren’t ideal, and many of the sexier features are still down the road. Right now, for example, the Health app simply doesn’t do much. It depends on integration with third-party apps (scheduled for release with the phones) and the coming Apple See.
The fresh operating system comes on the fresh phones and can be installed this week on the iPhone 5S, five and 4S. People who have those phones and whose two-year cellphone contracts have not yet expired can rest effortless. They will get many of the best features of this year’s upgrade cycle.
The slender fresh iPhones aren’t a big-screen slam-dunk, but they work well, as we have come to expect from Apple. Ultimately, it’s what’s on the inwards that keeps them just in front of their competitors.
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A version of this article shows up in print on September 17, 2014, on Page B1 of the Fresh York edition with the headline: With Fresh iPhones, What’s Inwards Counts. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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