I had to pop over to Sydney for 24 hours for a business trip last week. Completely by coincidence, that meant I was there for the iPhone 6 launch. I reserved an iPhone 6 for pick up with my manager’s blessing to disappear for an hour. When I arrived at 10am, the lines were… impressive. There was a separate line for reservations, which was relatively fast moving. We were asked to sign model release forms so they could film us and use it for an internal company video on the iPhone launch.
It took about half an hour to get from queuing on the street to standing at the Genius Bar to get my iPhone 6. My Apple Genius was I think more excited than I was.
First Impressions
It’s thin, light, and beautifully made. It fits well in the hand. The screen curving down to meet the sides gives the effect of content almost floating on the surface. It’s exactly as beautiful as the renders.
It’s big. When I brought it back to the office and showed it around, some people thought it was the Plus at first. It is a little awkward for one-handed use and I have large hands that can easily swallow up a 5" or less Android phone. The phone is very tall compared to a similar specced Android, to accommodate the large home button. This makes reaching up to the top left-hand corner difficult without changing grip. Firing off a text message can be done with one hand, reaching up to back out of the conversation requires two.
For me, the trade-off is worth it. SMS messaging and calls are now only a small percentage of the tasks I use my phone for. Web browsing, eBook reading and social networking all benefit from the increased real estate. Even the humble SMS message is more pleasant when you can see more of the conversation at a glance.
The screen is magnificent. Blacks are very black, colours are rich. I can’t say that I can tell the difference in resolution between the iPhone 6 1334x750 and the 1920x1080 of the Galaxy S5 I upgraded from. To my less-than-perfect eyesight they are both perfect displays.
Battery life seems improved over the iPhone 5s, which I carried for a few months this year as my personal phone. I can get through a day of heavy use but I need to charge every night so far.
Operating System
The iPhone 6 was my first experience with iOS 8 as I didn’t have a chance to update my iPad before heading overseas. Most of the differences are subtle. The new keyboard is excellent and I have tried out a couple of third party ones only to go back to the integrated keyboard. It’s just that good.
Reachability sounded really odd but in practice it’s very usable. A light double touch (not press) of the home button will bring the top of the screen down to make it easier to interact with notification or press buttons at the top of the screen. Once you press a button it springs back up again.
There are some issues with application scaling on the iPhone 6 and 6 plus. Apple built-in applications and some third party apps like the official Twitter client look great but many apps are scaled up - poorly. Text looks every so slightly blurry and the status bar and keyboard are ridiculously huge. A side-by side view shows the problem.
To see the unscaled version, click through to flickr, then select ‘Download All Sizes’ and choose 'Original’
When I upgraded from the iPhone 3g to the iPhone 4 it was a few months before all the applications I used upgraded to the higher resolution resources. Developers need time - but I hope it won’t take too long. These scaled apps look terrible.
For the most part, iOS8 feels rather like iOS7. In the last three days I haven’t noticed any major differences with the exception of Photos.
Camera
iPhoto is gone and Photos now incorporates a reasonable proportion of iPhoto’s editing tools. Photos, however, strips the EXIF data from photographs on edit. I will need to find another tool to be able to continue using my iPad for photography unless I can figure out how to turn that 'feature’ off. Photos now no longer distinguishes between iCloud photos and those local to the device which confused me momentarily.
I can’t give an in-depth review of the camera yet, not having had much opportunity to go out and shoot with it since being home from Sydney. All my tourist shots were taken with an iPhone 4s before purchasing the 6. Clearly an excuse to go back. I am hoping to really put the camera through it’s paces over the next week and upload some more samples.
Focus is fast and accurate, colours are great, and distortion is astonishingly well controlled. Looking at the photograph of the statue below at 100% we can see very good performance in capturing foliage - usually a torture test for showing up noise reduction in-camera - and this performance can be observed edge to edge. It’s really very easy to get a finger in the frame with the lens so close to the edge of the camera.
My apologies for the blur in the top left. That was my finger.
Conclusion
It’s gorgeous. Go out and get one. But get a good look at the size first.