An Apple IPhone 6 Plus Review

Smartphones these days have become boring. They are iterative improvements of models that were launched before. If you change them every year, then the advances become less evident. Every second Android smartphone is prone to this problem. But, phones based on Google's operating system aren't alone, Even Apple's mighty iPhone is not spared. That's why instead of trying to hard-sell innovation, Apple sticks to a tick-tock cadence, where one year it brings out massive design changes and the next it brings through massive performance and usability changes. These models are dubbed the 'S' models.

Year 2015 happens to be the year of the 'S' models. So we have the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 6S Plus - the big boy Apple smartphone. Competition for Apple hasn't been stiffer. Android smartphone makers like Samsung have upped their game by leaps and bounds. Android itself has improved a lot - its latest version comes with new tricks that the iPhone can't hope to imitate in the short term.

When you talk about big screens though, you don't naturally think about Apple's iPhone. Instead you think about Samsung's Galaxy Note. Last years model was a good first attempt, but Apple will never settle for a good first attempt. Its products are supposed to be the best.

Armed with a new display technology and vastly improved internal parts - the iPhone 6S Plus looks largely similar from the outside, but does it have enough mojo to take the title of the best big screen smartphone in the world? We find out?

Design and build quality

Apple's 'S' models of the iPhone normally look visually identical. The iPhone 6S Plus is no different. Changes on the outside are subtle for the sake of functionality. In fact the biggest change is the new colour. This year we get a chic 'rose gold' colour, which looks more like pink than a gold.

The iPhone 6 Plus was an elegant looking smartphone with great fit and finish. The iPhone 6S Plus too looks elegant. While Samsung's new Galaxy smartphones are stunning with glass and metal - their designs are decidedly loud. Apple's aren't.

You notice some change when you pick up the new iPhone 6S Plus. It is heavier and minutely taller and thicker than its predecessor. Apple doesn't openly point that out, but it does mention the changes in the specs. It is now 7.3mm thick. 0.2mm thicker than the previous model. It remains thinner than Samsung's new Galaxy Note 5.

At 192 grams - the iPhone 6S Plus feels quite heavy. Thankfully, Apple has nailed the weight distribution so well that it doesn't feel insanely awkward.

The build quality is what will strike you. It feels rock solid. Gone are the days of the iPhone feeling a little fragile. Apple has used a new series 7000 aluminium which is of the same grade that is used in aircrafts and that makes all the difference. So much so that, we accidently dropped the iPhone 6S Plus from a height of about 5 feet and the phone came out unscathed with just a minute ding on the casing.

What we don't like is that the iPhone 6S Plus is much larger than phones that have bigger screens than it such as the Galaxy Note 5. On the top and bottom, the borders are just too big. As in 'S' models, Apple doesn't change the core design of the phone, this was probably bound to happen. Size reduction should happen in the next iPhone. It desperately needs it. It is too big, even for a big phone.

Display

The iPhone 6S Plus retains a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display, which isn't too bad as it is plenty dense with 400 dots per inch. It is an accurate screen in terms of colours, which look true to real life. It also has superb viewing angles and is adequately bright. However, it will not mesmerise you the way Samsung's Galaxy note 5 screen will with its outlandish colours and searing contrast.

While the resolution has remained the same, there are other changes. Firstly, Apple has changed the cover glass on the screen. It has worked with Corning to develop what it calls the strongest cover-glass found on a smartphone.

Secondly, Apple has introduced a new technology it calls 3D Touch. It is a new type of pressure sensitive display technology, which adds functionality to the phone and changes the way we use it. For the good, obviously.

The premise is simple. When you press down on the screen, it is able to understand the amount of pressure that is being applied and will respond with a vibrating feedback to notify you. Depending on the app being optimised for it - it offers different functions.

At the moment, however, it works more like a glorified 'right click' on some Apple apps and third party apps, which too is a very good thing. It also works with a layer of tempered glass and there is no change in the user experience.

The 3D touch is unique to the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 6S Plus. It does enhance the experience in a meaningful way at least for iOS users. The concept of press and hold has been non existent on iOS, but on Android it has been present. Still, Android phones don't have just detailed pressure sensitivity and no app on Android gauges the pressure and uses it to offer different functions.

Camera

For the first time in four years, the iPhone camera has gotten a resolution bump. This year the iPhone 6S Plus has a 12-megapixel camera with big 1.22 um pixels, optical stabilisation and a f/2.2 aperture. Optical stabilisation also makes its way to video. The phone supports new image format which Apple calls 'Live Photos' and also 4K video, which has been there on Android phones for at least two years.

How's the image quality? The short answer is very good. However, it comes with a caveat. One also has to say that the iPhone isn't the undisputed king in mobile photography anymore. Samsung's Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Plus smartphones leapfrog it in many areas. In fact, if you stick to just sharing photos on social media you'd probably think that it's not even an upgrade from the iPhone 6.

But there's been a big upgrade. The iPhone excels at colour reproduction. So, unlike Samsung's phones there is no artificial enhancement to the picture clicked from the iPhone 6S Plus.

The iPhone really shines at wide-angle scenes where it can showcase its amazing dynamic range. It is great for shooting scenes with changing light. An image at dusk clicked with the iPhone will come out better than most phones in the market including the new Galaxies.

In low-light, the iPhone doesn't unnaturally brighten photos up like Samsung's phones. That appears to be a deliberate decision and also due to a narrower lens. It, however, comes with a better flash. The dual-tone flash on the iPhone 6S Plus works really well and is one of the only flash systems in the market that don't ruin low-light images.

4K video too shot with the iPhone 6S Plus comes out crisp. It doesn't have a lot of shake and the phone always gets the focus right. The audio is also of the highest quality.

With selfies being all the rage these days, Apple also decided to bump the front camera to a heart 5-megapixel resolution. The real innovation is that Apple has figured out a way of making the screen light up like the rear flash and it makes a world of difference. Selfies taken indoors with the iPhone 6S Plus will come out better than a Samsung Galaxy.

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Also Read: Galaxy Note 5 vs iPhone 6 Plus detailed camera shootout

Software

The iPhone 6S Plus is powered by iOS 9, which comes with a bunch of new additions. However, many of the additions of iOS 9 aren't available in India. For example - the News app. But still, thanks to the fluid and straightforward experience by iOS 9, the iPhone remains one of the easiest phones to operate and also one of the smoothest.

iOS 9 is a refinement of the operating system which also makes allowances for the new pressure sensitive display. Using some clever software in lockstep with the new pressure sensitive display Apple gives us a peek into what the future of smartphone operation holds for all of us. In the coming months once more apps are developed for the new 3D Touch display, this will be more than a peek for sure.

The email app is a great example. Apple has multiple actions, which are defined as peek and pop. Tap and hold on an email, you can get a preview. While doing so, you can flick up and get quick actions like reply, reply all and forward. Tap harder the email pops open. The same action works inside the messages app. On the home screen you press and hold on certain apps you'd get a quick actions menu, which works just like the mouse click of the PC. Depending on what the app developer wants, it can offer certain shortcuts to functions within the app with you needing navigate through the app.

So, imagine you want to take a selfie. Instead of going into the camera and switching the camera, you can tap and hold the camera icon and a quick actions menu will present you four options - take selfie, record video, record slo-mo and take photo. It is as simple as that and all this makes the iPhone a more efficient computer. Make no mistake as developers figure out a way of integrating 3D Touch in their apps, we all will not use our phones the same way and it will be for the better.

Pressing and holding on the sides of the screen also summons the app switcher. You can still do that by double tapping the home button, but now you have one more way. Lastly, if you press and hold on the keyboard - it goes into this new trackpad mode, which is just awesome for people who need to make or edit big documents on the phone. This is especially true of the iPhone 6S Plus, which gives it some real productivity chops up against the might Samsung Galaxy Note 5.

Apple has also refined the keyboard in landscape mode which now works better for creating content.

Siri is also working significantly faster. It recognises the Indian accent with ease and searches for queries at a blistering pace similar to Google Now.

Apple hasn't fixed notifications in iOS, which is a pity considering even the Touch ID is lightning fast that you'd not even realise you have notifications.

Performance

The iPhone 6S Plus is the fastest smartphone in the world by a mile. Heck, some benchmarks suggest it is as fast as a 2-year-old MacBook Air and faster than the new MacBook Apple released earlier in the year.

So what's inside? The phone is powered by a dual-core A9 processor clocked at 1.7GHz with just 2GB RAM. How is the performance? Well, if we had to put it in a word, we say scintillating. No hangs, no lags and everything ran faster than the iPhone 6 and the Galaxy Note 5. We mean everything - app load times, web pages, app switching. But that's only perceptible if compared side-by-side as the aforementioned devices are scorching fast in their own right.

The iPhone 6S Plus is also the best smartphone in the world - by again - a mile, if you want to play games on it. We played Asphalt 8, Minecraft and Modern Combat and the graphics weren't much off than what you'd get on an Xbox 360, if not better at times. Frame rate drops were non-existent and the experience was just delightful.

The amazing thing is while doing so the iPhone 6S Plus never got warm. This is a far-cry from what happens on the Android side of things where phones are packed to the rafters with 8-core processors and 4GB RAM and they start becoming toasty like a thin-crust pizza.

Call quality was good and we faced nothing out of the ordinary. We tested the phone on Airtel's 4G network in Delhi NCR.

Speakerphone quality was also very good for both calls and also listening to music. However, phones like the HTC One (M9)+ and Moto X Style are louder.

Also Read: Nexus 5X can't compete with iPhone 6S. No Android phone can

Battery Life

The biggest pain point of owning an iPhone is the battery life. Many hoped Apple would fix this issue and build a bigger battery in the iPhone 6S Plus. Apple, instead made it smaller. It now has a 2,915mAh battery, which is also smaller than the one on the Galaxy Note 5.

Thankfully coupled with the new power saving features on iOS 9. The battery life did not change. We're talking about 30 hours of battery life with medium to heavy usage and a little more with lighter usage. This too on a shoddy network with weak signals and poor 4G, which sucks more life out of battery.

This was also better than the battery life we found on the Galaxy Note 5, which was a little lesser.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't offer any fast charging tech. Charging the battery of the iPhone 6S Plus takes time. That being said, it does ship it now with a 10 watt charger.

Should you buy it

Make no mistake the iPhone 6S Plus is the fastest smartphone ever made. It also comes with a new screen technology which will likely change the way use our phones. It is what the 15-inch MacBook Pro is to pro users: an absolute battleship which can handle anything that you throw at it. At the same time, it exposes weaknesses of the Apple's 'S' models. Because Apple needs to bring out new features in a similar design sometimes compromises are made. For instance, the pressure sensitive technology makes it thicker.

But still, the iPhone 6S Plus is a jack of all - it has a great camera, it is the best phone to buy to play games and with improvements in iOS 9, it is now much better to get work done. However, it doesn't have any feature that will lure away a hardcore Galaxy Note user.

In fact, some perplexing decisions by Apple have made it a harder phone to recommend. It starts at a mind-boggling Rs 72,000 for the meagre 16GB version, which anyways we wouldn't recommend. You should only buy it if you don't care about the amount of money you're spending - if you do, then you should consider either the older iPhone 6 Plus or the Galaxy Note 5.

its iphone X

wow, its been a loooong time since i post on this blog. and here is the review of iphone x :

The iPhone X would be the massive jump ahead that Apple’s specs needed. This new iPhone is defined to have the largest impact on Apple’s smartphone management. However, while the iPhone X is about superior components and an eye-opening encounter.

You will find practically no bezels around the monitor. There is no longer Home button. Fire an augmented reality game or a film, and you’re going to notice everything else falls apart except the material.

Losing key, dependable components such as the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, the house button introducing new techniques of surfing and unlocking the telephone and charging much more for the liberty, sounds risky for a business which was treading new ground by doing away with the conventional headphone jack this past year.

However, the iPhone X is that the handset we have been demanding out of Apple for decades, a universe away in the increasingly-tired layouts that those who only need a fresh iPhone have had to contend with.

Specification

Weight: 174g
Dimensions: 143.6 x 70.9 x 7.7 mm
OS: iOS 11
Screen size: 5.8-inch
Screen Resolution: 1125×2436
CPU: A11 Bionic
RAM: 3GB
Storage: 64GB / 256GB
Battery: 2716mAh
Rear camera: 12MP+12MP (both OIS)
Front camera: 7MP

Price

It is the priciest flagship phone available on the current market, but iPhone consumers are more prepared than most to look beyond price. The focus here will be on the tech.

The iPhone X prices $999 for its fundamental, 64GB version. If you would like the bigger 256GB model it is likely to charge you $1,149 for your privilege. this is the price in 2017.

Display

The 5.8-inch OLED screen is, very simply, the best thing Apple has jammed in an iPhone.

It is also with a new, more rapid, display, although it seems bigger than the iPhone 8 Plus’ 5.5-inch screen. It is extended upwards.

OLED technology means you are becoming deeper blacks and more blinding whites, therefore everything from sites to the photographs you choose will seem somewhat better.

It has been dubbed the very best on earth, from the prestigious DisplayMate testing, demonstrating that it is the brightest and much more color-accurate OLED available on the marketplace and great off-centre brightness changes – revealing Apple can tune the technician from Samsung quite well.

The expression ‘bezel-less’ has been bandied around for the iPhone X but it doesn’t actually tell the ideal story. Yes, you will find slight circles round the borders of the display, but they do not mar the experience — they provide the palms something to land, preventing unintentional touches of this display.

Talking of visual allure, the notch near the peak of this iPhone X is something which’s likely to split opinion, and that is fair.

In portrait mode it is difficult to notice it is there, along with the manner by which the notifications pub spills around it’s fine.

But set the phone in landscape mode and it is a lot more noticeable; it is an irritant once you’re watching films, as when we desired to enlarge them to fill out the display (one of the actual allure of having a more screen) elements of this activity were cut out from the elite.

The lengthier display is thinner although – this means there is less property for typing. We did not observe this in the beginning, but if switching between the X and also an older iPhone, you will see there is less distance for the digits to tap.

While we are speaking about that lengthier display, the 18:9 format is something we have seen on many of different mobiles this season, and from the Android globe the programs are mostly encoded to meet with the screen just fine.

About the iPhone X, nevertheless, that is not the situation, with many programs we utilized packing enormous black bars above and below the screen. That has fast begun to improve however, and every day more programs upgrade for the longer display.

The matter with programs with the black bars is that it gets the iPhone X seem like any other mobiles out of Apple – even an iPhone 3GS — also given the display is the key visual differentiator on this particular phone, and you need every program to fill the screen well, so it is great many programmers are getting their act together and creating an X-friendly variant of the wares.

The phone can display movies encoded from the HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats, and united with the OLED screen the pictures offer much more depth and realistic colour reproduction.

When compared with the LCD display of this iPhone 8 Plus, there are instances when you’re able to see less of this activity, but compare them side by side and you will understand that the general richness, quality and depth for viewing films is only greater on the iPhone X.

Much like the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, the X utilizes a True Tone screen, which reproduces the light requirements around it and will correct the white balance so. It isn’t a reason to purchase the telephone by itself, but it is a very premium little extra you will grow to enjoy.

Face ID

After enrolling my face working with the TrueDepth camera to the front of the telephone, which included titling my mind in various directions, the iPhone X usually unlocked the telephone with no issue. However, the method isn’t instantaneous.

You will know for certain if the iPhone X is about to work with when a little padlock icon floats towards the surface of the display. From that point, you swipe from the very base of this screen to unlock the telephone. With a stopwatch, I discovered Face ID marginally slower compared to Touch ID. But should you swipe on the display almost the moment you examine the telephone, you can unlock the iPhone X nearly immediately.

However, you have to be certain that you’re taking a look at the telephone.

As you will need to swipe on the display to unlock the iPhone X, there is technically an excess step in contrast to Touch ID. On my present iPhone 7 Plus I will simply press and hold on the Home button to unlock and begin utilizing the gadget. In addition, I wish I could swipe anywhere on the display; rather, Apple compels you to take action in the base of the screen.

I had no issue dividing the iPhone X together with my head in a really dim pub and also at night in complete darkness, but for some reason, Face ID got triggered on a elevator. I had to enter my passcode to trigger Face ID, though I had not deactivated it.

Animoji

You have likely heard a reasonable bit about Animoji previously, the quality that allows you to create speaking emoji employing the TrueDepth camera along with your face.

It is an extremely entertaining system — you may be talking robot, dog, cat, unicorn or part of poo, one of other avatars. The remarkable thing, however, isn’t you are able to send an animated emoji for your buddies, but the utter accuracy of this facial mapping.

And even though you are able to share the movies with friends in programs besides iMessage, it is not simple to do. And when your friends do not possess an iPhone X, it is still possible to send them Animoji, but they will want to phone and will not have the ability to. This feature actually has to roll out to additional programs – or those programmers will need to code at a similar alternative.

This is a quality that will delight kids, and we could observe how programmers can create some really cool programs for children with the front-facing camera in the iPhone X.

Cameras

The camera in the iPhone X is quite much like this one on the iPhone 8 Plus, using some very tiny differences. For example, while both possess a double 12MP sensor selection (like shooting zoomed-in images, or shooting depth understanding in a spectacle) that the iPhone X comes with an f/2.4 aperture, in which on iPhone 8 Plus it is f/2.8, and just the wide-angle lens includes optical image stabilization.

The front-facing TrueDepth camera, that will be a 7MP with a few wise abilities to produce the iPhone among the very best selfie-taking cameras in the marketplace. The camera can feel thickness incredibly well, therefore the newest Portrait mode surfaced to the iPhone 8 Plus may be used with the front-facing camera to shoot excellent selfies.

The images seem much better over the X’s OLED display also, as a result of the enhanced contrast ratios and improved colours, though sharing the very same images into a Apple TV shows they are somewhat brighter than on the telephone display.

Though the iPhone X has been a ways from becoming the first handset from Apple to utilize Live Photos, this attribute is enhanced in iOS 11 — having the ability to loop, bounce or long-expose photographs is a fun bit extra which you could share with friends nicely.

The general rate of snapping and high quality of this iPhone X camera is powerful, as you would expect from a flagship handset out of Apple using the newest A11 Bionic chip indoors.

Low-light functionality is a bit better than from preceding iPhones — although it is curious how the iPhone 8 Plus and X have various apertures, yet provide the exact same type of zoomed-in low-end functionality.

The camera can do with booting up a bit quicker from the lock display (though now you can 3D Touch – drive difficult – to the picture icon to load the camera, instead of swiping), but normally it is difficult to mistake the normal, crisp and clear pictures you are going to receive in the iPhone.

The back Portrait style is just one of the better choices available on the current market, but occasionally it does not really discover the border of things it is hoping to depth-sense — the Google Pixel 2 really does it better using just one lens, even though the impact on both is equally sensational as it works properly.

It’s worth pointing out that ‘normal’ iPhone images have a wonderful degree of background blur mechanically, together with all the focal length automatically locating a wonderful depth of field for anything you are attempting to snap.

Video capacities on the iPhone X can also be one of the very best available on the current market, using the 4K recording at 60 frames per second providing crisp, fluid pictures, albeit pictures which will occupy a reasonable bit of space on your device.

Audio

A particular reference to Apple for how it has integrated the speakers to this tightly-packaged mobile phone. The audio is actually something, with complete volume creating the telephone reverberate with sound.

Concerning noise, it is worth mentioning that there is no headset jack on the brand new iPhone range. Apple has made a large bet it may convince consumers to leave their 3.5millimeter headphones supporting, but it still annoys for today in the event that you don’t have an adequate set of Bluetooth headset or shed the adapter that comes from the box.

The noise got somewhat harsh near at maximum volume, however. The telephone quality seemed clear. The speakers are definitely strong enough to be observed at a moving automobile.

Battery

The battery to the iPhone X is currently 2716mAh, making it a bit bigger than the iPhone 8 Plus. That is quite a massive power mobile from Apple, however given the bigger screen with more pixels to electricity, it is logical.

In hefty testing, we were able to conduct the iPhone down in only a shade over 12 hours. But that contained 30 minutes of Netflix wanting HDR manner, walking into work and listening to Bluetooth audio on Spotify, employing a mobile hotspot on the train, shooting sample pictures with the camera and analyzing Face ID over and above, and playing some games.

Depending on the information that we have pulled from utilizing the iPhone X in many different situations, we have discovered that it will last a good 18 hours daily with a few heavier usage – which comprises a tonne of Bluetooth streaming, WhatsApp, Facebook and surfing the world wide web, all things which are fairly tough on the battery life.

The main reason it appears to perform better than some may expect is that the display – that the OLED technology has turned out to be rather capable of sucking on less battery.

That is shown in our testing: we conducted the exact same 90 moment, Full HD movie in full brightness in 100% control – and also the iPhone X establish a record-breaking rating for an Apple handset.

Where many (such as the iPhone 8 Plus) dropped around 25% battery, the iPhone X operated an unbelievable 10% fall and also given the X includes more pixels to push out of precisely the exact same A11 Bionic chipset on the 8 Plus, it is just the OLED technology that is the differentiator.

What’s a shame is the iPhone X is not the poster child for wireless charging in an Apple mobile – that the simple fact that the attribute has already surfaced about the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.

The fantastic thing is that using iOS 11.2 Apple will allow even faster charging via the radio pads – nothing significant, but should mean that you get more increase from a couple of minutes of being plopped back on the charger.

You might even purchase a USB-C Lightning cable and also block to receive rapid charging capacities – reported to be 50% battery out of half an hour of power – but costs $75 to purchase the cable and also block that’s quite expensive.

The A11 Fusion processor within this mobile is among the most likely causes of its progress in battery life – using much more efficient cores along with a 10nm manufacturing procedure (which means items are nearer together, and much more efficient) Apple has worked hard on attracting both power and efficacy into the iPhone X.

Performance

The iPhone X is the quickest phone, but is that the iPhone 8 along with iPhone 8 Plus. That is not a knock against the brand new iPhone; it only has the exact same strong A11 Bionic processor indoors, which runs circles around Android telephones in both artificial benchmarks and real-world evaluations.

There is a potent engine in the center of the iPhone, together with the A11 Bionic processor operating in tandem with 3GB of RAM. That does not seem like much RAM, but it is the Apple has chucked into a telephone, and it shows in the rate of usage.

As an example, the iPhone X required just 42 minutes to transcode a 2-minute 4K video utilizing the Adobe Clips program.

About Geekbench 4, that measures general functionality, the iPhone X provides a rather large score of 10,357.

You will feel like that is a powerful, solidly constructed handset (and remember, it is still IP67 water-resistant) and you would be correct — even though it being glass and black, Apple thinks it’s produced the most powerful iPhone yet.