Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus reviewed

Take the phone out of the box and into your hand, and if you’ve yet to feel Apple’s inspired-by-iPod Touch design, it’s lovely.

Soft metal along the back curving around 7.1mm thin edges to meet a piece of glass in a transition that seems almost impossible, as if the phone itself were made from one object, even though there are two distinct materials at play.

It’s a design that is typically Apple, and feels like a hybrid between the iPod Touch and the iPad Air, and it works, feeling great in the hands, even though it is obviously so big.

So big that it’s very hard to hold with one hand, and that if you’ve come from an iPhone in the past, you’ll probably need some time to get used to this design and feeling that Apple has put forth.

Over time, it will grow on you, and over time, it will likely make some dents in your pants, as it’s just that big, but it is a nice feeling, and exudes the quality you’ve come to expect from an Apple smartphone.

Next is the performance, and given that we’ve seen the iPhone 6 already, reviewing it around a month ago, you probably won’t be surprised to find that the iPhone 6 Plus is practically identical in performance, throwing up the odd bug here and there, but otherwise providing solid speeds as you jump from app to app.

Most of the apps ran quickly, near instantaneously, and it’s good to see the A8 processor really working away, making the phone fly through games and apps.

Mobile performance is also solid, with the 4G LTE providing speeds in ours tests ranging from 30Mbps all the way to 60Mbps, though higher is definitely possible depending on what telco you’re using, while home networks with 802.11ac technology used will see faster downloads in the home as well.

While we love 4G, we’re really quite thrilled to see 802.11ac embraced, especially when we expected it last year, as it provides that much needed network range and boost many home users have been looking for.

Apple’s attention to detail on the screen is solid too, with a gapless design producing near perfect viewing angles, solid colours, excellent contrast, and a pixel clarity putting the phone into a similar area to other flagship smartphones.

Forget the Retina resolution level of 326 pixels per inch, we’re talking ever so slightly above 400, perfect for those who like to talk about numbers and how our eyes can actually see the pixels in smaller screens.

If that’s you, you’ll be delighted to see such a high quality screen employed on an iPhone, as it allows you to read smaller text on websites that haven’t quite updated their designs or moved to something responsive, clearing up text and other minute details so that your eyes don’t ache every time you focus on something small.

The camera is also excellent, and this is one of those features that actually is ever so slightly different from its iPhone 6 sibling, with optical image stabilisation thrown in on this model, but not the iPhone 6.

Why?

We’re not sure, to be honest. It could be that the extra body size gives Apple a way of inserting different technology, but it’s probably also to give another reason for people to invest in the bigger phone, rather than just go with the 4.7 inch. A nudge, if you will.

Image sample from the iPhone 6 Plus camera

As for the camera side of things, as has been the case for Apple for some time, the camera software is easy to use, with a simple touch to focus and then a camera button to fire the image.

It’s about as easy as it gets, though is possibly a little less easy than Motorola’s “just touch here to fire” mechanism, which currently sits across the Moto G, E, and X smartphones.

The interface also has its layers of complexity, allowing users to swipe up or down to send the camera into square crop shooting modes, video, slow motion, and time lapse, with image filters also available, in case you don’t feel like sending your photo through Instagram.

And if you feel like controlling your photo just a little more, you can focus on a specific point and change the light for the photo around that specific selection, dragging a brightness cursor up or down along the side, changing the light balance for that specific selection.