Well, after a long long wait, Apple has finally announced its this year flagship Apple iPhone 6, which comes in two different models of 4.7inch and 5.5inch. As just spotted, the 5.5inch model of the device is named as the iPhone 6 Plus. In addition to this two smartphones, the Cupertino giant has also went out announcing its much awaited Apple Watch, but this article will major focus on in-depth details of what all goodies has the 4.7inch model has to offer us!
There are a lot of changes that come in this new flagship in terms of its hardware and software like larger display, more powerful chipset, slimmer design, the latest released developer-friendly iOS 8 on-board and much more.
Design and Display
The design of the iPhone 6 was always much in talks before its official release! With the release, it is clear that this is the second major re-design that comes with rounded edges with a more rectangular narration and has been more squeezed up making it slimmer and lighter. Yes, the new iPhone 6 just packs within 6.9mm of thickness weighing as light as 129 grams only.
Moving to its display, Apple seems to have understood the need for larger sized display and thus taking a larger leap, the new iPhone 6 offers a 4.7” IPS display with a pixel resolution of 1334×750 pixels and 326 ppi density. However, even with the increased size, Apple has ensured to pretty much stay in line with its “retina display” philosophy delivering similar results to the existing Apple iPhone 5s. However, the Cupertino giant claims that the iPhone 6 can deliver brightness up to 500 nits and comes covered with an oleophobic coating over it that ensures that your screen will be free from any kind of fingerprint smudges over it.
The powerful and new Apple A8 chipset with 64-bit architecture
It was quite expected that will bake its new A8 chipset to the core of iPhone 6. To get into details, this is the new quad-core A8 SoC that is the company’s custom made chipset built with the 64-bit ARM architecture, more specifically ARMv8. Compared to its predecessor (A7 in iPhone 5s) the Apple A8 is 13% smaller measuring just 20-nm in size with nearly 2 billion transistors employed for work. Two of the chip’s cores are 25% faster and the GPU performance has been topped up with 50% better performance. Here is a comparison graph showing it with the first ever iPhone till now.
The excellent part is that the new SoC supports over 20 LTE bands that is above any existing smartphone in the market. The new iPhone 6 also supports features like Wi-Fi calling, LTE roaming and Voice Over LTE. Apple has moved over to the Wi-Fi 802.11ac standard that delivers that delivers up to three times faster speeds when connected to a wireless network. With all these enhanced and power-packed features, one thing you would surely be wondering off is what about the battery life of the device! Apple is yet to unveil the exact capacity of the device but says that when compared to the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 would offer 4 extra hours in 3G talk-time, 1 hour of extra video playback and 10 more hours of audio listening.
An enhanced 8MP iSight camera with True Tone flash
Apple said that with the new phase focus technology brought to its iPhone 6 camera, the time required to focus is almost cut to half. Another good thing about the camera is that it can also snap slow-motion videos in 720p resolution at an excellent 240 frames per second. This means capturing slow-motion videos is certainly going to be a delight for users. A bit disappointment here is that, Apple has kept itself from bringing OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) to the new iPhone 6. But the company says that they have incorporated a new software implementation that would compensate for hand shake during video capture.
The camera at the front comes with new sensor with f/2.2 lens offering the company’s much famous FaceTime feature in HD mode. The company claims that this new configuration enables the camera to collect 81% more light means that users will now get even more brighter selfies.
The all new Apple Pay for wireless payments through NFC
One of the biggest announcements that came along with the iPhone 6 was an introduction to the company’s new Apple Pay service. This new feature from Apple will work along with the existing PassBook that would offer new wireless digital payments through NFC.
The new iPhone 6 comes with built-in NFC chip, which along with the Apple Pay will facilitate users to make payments at large number of retail locations like McDonals, Subway, Whole Food Market, Starbucks, Macy’s, Staples, Bloomingdales and Disney and Apple stores. For this Apple has partnered with American Express, Visa, Amex and MasterCard. This means all you need for your weekend picnics is nothing more but just an iPhone 6.
Well, looking it from the security point of view, Apple has promised that this new feature will certainly hold much more enhanced security. Instead of sharing up your credit card info with merchants during transactions, the new Apple Pay will generate one-time-only dynamic security tokens. Thus on completion of the transaction, the security token will not be any more useful even if someone gets note of it. This would ensure more safety and security of your personal banking info.
New iOS 8 with more functional notification bar, improved Siri and latest Health App
Moving up from the design-centric iOS 7, Apple has moved to iOS focusing much more on its functionality additions. Apple has gone up more flexible with its new iOS 8 which hosts a new software keyboard called QuickType. The good things is that the company has given open access to its keyboard component thereby creating an open platform for third party developers to create custom keyboards for people who usually are not much happy with Apple’s own implementation. The new built-in keyboard of iOS 8 comes with few next word suggestions as found in most Android keyboards. According to Apple, the QucikType is now much more smart that is able to differentiate between your formal and informal contacts based on the conversations and will set a more predictive vocabulary as per the need. This means that if you are texting to your boss, it will set a more formal vocabulary while in case texting to your friends it will put an informal vocabulary ahead.
The famous TouchID feature from Apple is now available to third party apps as well! Apple has ensured for this as all the biometric information of fingerprints would be stored inside the chip and no third party apps would have any kind of access to it that ensures higher level of safety. Another major improvement in the iOS 8 is its notification bar. The notification bar has now turned to be more functional that will allow to perform a large number of actions like replying to a text message or like any new Facebook post. Moreover, all this actions could also be performed via the lockscreen as well! Apple has also announced back at the WWDC that it would be bringing widget support in the new iOS 8.
Siri – Apple’s virtual assistant has been given some good attention and is now able to recognize songs, control some smart household gadgets using the HomeKit API and even make iTunes purchases. Siri is now capable of understanding some over two dozen languages which you can just activate by saying “Hey, Siri!” for any kind of assistance needed.
Pricing and Release date
Apple has launched its iPhone 6 in three different storage variants of 16GB, 64GB and 128GB. Apple is the first company as on date to offer a 100+GB built-in memory in a phone. The above image clearly reveals the pricing showing the 16GB version of iPhone 6 to be costing $199 on 2-year contract, the 64GB to be costing $299 and the 128GB version for $399.
Pre-orders for all these models will begin tomorrow on September 12th and the company would start shipping out the models next week on September 19th. The first batch of the new flagship would go on sale in countries like USA, France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada, UK, Singapore and Japan. Nearly 115 countries would be receiving this device by the end of this year.
You can check out our complete review for the 5.5” iPhone 6 Plus as well as the newly launched Apple Watch. Catch a large number of promo videos released by the company here.
Apple iPhone 6 complete review: Official specs, images and Promo Video
