After rumors and customer demand, Apple has finally given the people what they want: an iPhone 6 with a larger-than-4.5-inch screen. In fact, customers will have a choice of two phone to consider, the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus.
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| APPLE LAUNCHED IPHONE IN TWO VARIANT IPHONE 6 AND IPHONE 6 PLUS |
Bigger screen
The smaller iPhone 6 breaks away from the 4-inch screen of models past and into larger territory, though at 4.7-inches, the iPhone 6 is still small by today's standards.
Apple is still giving the phone a Retina display (they're calling it Retina HD) with a 326ppi, by imbuing the iPhone 6 with a 1,334 x 750 HD pixel resolution.
Apple doesn't want to just give customers a larger screen without doing anything useful with it. To that end, the company touts a new horizontal view (that really reminds us of the iPad) to see messages, weather, email, and so on. The keyboard pops up with new dedicated keys as well.
Although it's bigger, Apple still wants to enable one-handed access, and it's doing this with app drop-drowns.
The phone is also slim, at 6.9-millimeters thin.
The iPhone 6's A8 processor boasts 50 percent faster graphics and a 25 percent faster CPU that should make the phone more power efficient.
Apple never gives battery specifics in mAh, but the iPhone 6 is rated to last through 11 hours of video, and 14 hours on Wi-Fi. There's Wi-Fi calling at long last, and Voice over LTE (aka VoLTE).
Look and feel
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| Sleek Design |
How does the iPhone 6 feel to hold? Its larger body and more rounded edges make the slim form feel even thinner. While both sizes feel good, the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 fits more securely into the palm. Luckily, even if it does feel massive compared to a 4-inch model, iOS 8 does allow a one-handed way to pop to the top of apps and touch parts of the screen that might normally be out of reach.
Here's another interesting phone feature: glass that curves around the edges of the phone. It isn't the sapphire screen we were hearing about, but it is a slightly different design element. The phone is also slim, at 0.27-inch, or 6.9-millimeters thin, and it comes in three colors: gold, silver, and space gray.
Camera and video
Apple's 8-megapixel iPhone 6 iSight camera may not have had the pixel boost that fans might want, but it gets a refresh with a new sensor all the same. Focus time is down, Apple says, colors look more lifelike when the flash is engaged, and the imaging chip has better ways to battle noise. HDR is now automatically applied as well, something we're starting to see on other phones, too.
Panorama mode will capture up to 43 megapixels in its five-element lens, and there's face detection, as well as blink and smile detection. As with some rival phones, the burst mode auto-pick feature uses algorithms to select the best from a string of similar photos.
Pricing and availability
In the US, the 16GB version will sell for $199 on contract, but $100 more will get you a whopping 64GB for $299. Another $100 on top of that supersizes your storage to 128GB for $399. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and US Cellular will be among the first US carriers to sell the two new iPhones. T-Mobile and other carriers have not yet announced the off-contract price.
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| Apple Pay is the new Pay System Introduces in U.S Only |
Apple Pay and NFC
Apple Pay, a US-only system at launch, works with the Passbook app on your phone, and independently as well, to let you buy goods and services with a single touch of the phone. Like other mobile-payment systems, the merchant never sees your credit card details, and a handy feature incorporating the camera will add new credit card details to Passbook, which saves you some typing.
Starting in US with Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, Apple Pay is backed by six major banks, with more to come. Right out of the gate, you'll be able to use the service at 220,000 merchants that accept it, including Macy's, Walgreens and Duane Reed drug stores, Whole Foods, and McDonald's at all their store locations, drive-throughs included.
UPDATED ON 9/11/14
