Apple Hits A Couple Of Sixes

And knocks it out of the park!!

When Apple announces a new iPhone, it sets the trend for the industry. We’ve seen that with the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5 even the iPhone 5s (thanks to the path breaking TouchID).

When the iPhone 6 and its bigger sibling, the iPhone 6 Plus were announced a fortnight ago, they predictably attracted worldwide attention.

The phones bear an all-new design, spectacular looks and equally impressive specs — bigger (and better) displays, NFC (Finally!! Though restricted to Apple Pay at the moment), Apple’s fastest processor (A8), a fingerprint sensor and the brand new iOS 8.

At the design end, Sir Ive has been busy… changing a lot of the design elements that Apple had been using for the last four years. Letting go of the flat sides, sharp angles and double-chamfered edges of the iPhone 4, 4s, 5 and 5s (phew!) and come up with remarkably different-looking devices (including externally visible antennae).

He’s found the other end of the spectrum — the iPhones 6 are now almost all curves — the sides, the corners, the screen — all curves.

Yet the back and screen are as flat as most of my jokes.

All of this comes together to yield devices that feel smooth, slick and immensely holdable (that really is a word), despite their larger sizes thanks to their 4.7 inch and 5.5 inch (respectively) screens (up from the preceding iPhone 5’s 4 inches).

Now that we’ve had some hands-on time with both the smartphones, we marvel at how incredibly very well balanced they both are, despite the extra grams and inches. The iPhone 6 Plus does take some getting used to, but I for one, prefer the larger screen area (but that’s going to be covered in another article in a few days).

What’s amazing is that despite their larger dimensions, the pair of 6s are thinner than their smaller, more petite elder sibling (the iPhone 5)!

Let’s talk a bit more about the specs, shall we.

The iPhone 6 sports a 4.7 inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 750x1334 pixels and a pixel density of 326 ppi — the same as the iPhone 5. The 6 Plus comes with Apple’s biggest ever phone display — a 5.5 inch behemoth, with a brilliant 401 ppi pixel density. This is startling, since the theorem normally goes the other way — larger screens have lesser ppi (since the screen area is larger). Apple is obviously trying to attract folks to break into the phablet market that they’ve been ignoring all these years.

There’s an 8 megapixel camera to be found at the back on both phone, which is highly similar to the one on the iPhone 5, just a little snappier (hah!) and sharper. The 6 Plus once again gets a let up on the iPhone 6. It comes with Optical Image Stabilisation, and the 6 doesn’t.
Time for another design anomaly from Apple — they actually let the camera protrude out of the back for the first time ever! Much is and will be written about this in the coming months, I’m sure!

Sapphire: A whole bunch of the soothsayers had predicted, nay claimed to know for certain that the iPhones ‘6’ would have sapphire screens. Well they don’t. The only place that Apple used sapphire was on the back, to cover camera. So, despite the protrusion the camera and its glass should remain pristine for a long time to come.

Apple’s new A8 processor is supposedly faster. We’ll spare you the physics lecture, and just say this — this is the faster processor that Apple has right now, and it’s fast! It keeps things running smoothly and is assisted by the M8 coprocessor, which is designed specifically for sensor input, just as it’s previous iterations.

Some mocked Apple’s continuance of the 1 GB RAM, yet in all of Chip-Monks’ experience with the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, we have never, ever noticed the device stumble or wheeze, no matter if we threw at 23 GB BlueRay movie at it!

The brilliant display continues to be the benchmark, in fact its even better now, given new manufacturing methods that have made the screen thinner — the fonts and content seem to be floating just below your finger tip! This is a brilliant LCD screen. Apple’s still got that secret sauce they use to make LCDs stand shoulder to shoulder with Super AMOLEDs!

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are available in 3 memory variants: 16 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB and three colour variants — Gold, Silver and Grey.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.