Bigger and better: Apple’s iPhone 6 reviewed

iOS 8, Siri, and Touch ID

With the release of the iPhone 6 comes a new operating system: iOS 8.

The latest generation boasts a few features to better integrate your peripherals, with devices like there Jawbone Up and Fitbit Flex now able to paint a complete picture of your health for the “Health” app on iOS 8.

Apple’s messaging application aptly named “Messages” is better, too, and can now send voice messages almost like a tiny recorded phone call, except over Apple’s messaging system, with a location also able to be sent using the GPS and an Apple map.

Another important feature is particularly interesting, and that’s called Continuity.

Essentially, if you have several Apple devices, they too can receive the information from your phone at the same time. For instance, we had a phone call on our iPhone 6, and both the iMac on our desk running Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite Beta and the iPhone 5S running iOS 8 could pick up the phone call, allowing us to talk through these devices and sending the information to the active phone, the iPhone 6.

That is very cool, and it happens with messages as well, delivering our SMS to the computer when we need them.

Apple's menu, drop down, and swipe up notification bar.

We know this is an Apple-only feature, and you’ll need other Apple devices if you want to see it, but it’s cool nonetheless, and love seeing this in action.

QuickType and keyboard replacement are our other favourite features for iOS 8, with QuickType providing a better built-in keyboard that appears to learn, while Apple’s support for third party on-screen keyboards means you can add in Swype or SwiftKey and use gesture typing like how Android phones have had for ages.

There are still bugs here and there with iOS 8, noted with the replacement keyboards which would occasionally disappear and not load at all, or even disappear and leave us with Apple’s own keyboard until we left and re-entered the app.

Likewise, iOS 8 struggles with the new 1334×750 screen resolution, flickering wildly every so often in different apps, but it’s early days, and these problems are likely but a patch away.

Apple’s voice assistant Siri seems to have improved, too, with a more fluid assistant available at your disposal when you hold down the home button and call her to action.

After testing it, this reviewer prefers Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana to Apple’s Sir, but the experience has noticeably improved over the past year or two.

Finally, there’s Touch ID, that fingerprint sensor that didn’t do much last year and now does a little more.

Apple has kept the phone unlocking and app payments part of the package, and these work a treat once your digits have been setup, but more apps are set to involve the technology shortly, with a diary app available, and some password options, too.

We’re not sure if Apple has intentionally fixed or changed Touch ID, but it feels more stable this year in the iPhone 6, with most reads letting us into the phone quickly, and only a few extra tries needed. Light didn’t pose as much of a problem this year, and we could rely on the feature as a lock mechanism in our tests.

An improved camera

Smartphone cameras are getting better and better, and this is an area manufacturers are really thinking about.

You only have to look at the Nokia Lumia 1020 and its 40 megapixel camera to see just how playful manufacturers are getting, and with 13, 16, and 20 megapixel cameras normal inclusions, this is an area a manufacturer really has to think about.

For the iPhone 6, Apple hasn’t been working on increasing the sensor from its 8 megapixel count, but rather improving the sensor and how it views light, with the inclusion of “Focus Pixels,” which Apple says helps the iPhone get more information about what you’re aiming the camera at.

There’s little information on how this works, but it sounds a like a real-time version of RAW technology, taking information about light at various angles and using this to work out how best to focus the lens, while providing a touch based version of aperture control, sliding a little sun up or down a scale to change the light based on the subject you’re touching on the screen.

In real life and practise, the technology works for the most part, providing a little more control in one of the easiest camera apps, with solid performance in both daylight and at night.

An image from the camera of the Apple iPhone 6.

The best performance is in daylight, and we’re sure you’re hardly surprised by that, but at night, the effort isn’t bad, with the dual-tone flash helping light scenes, though we preferred the ambient light most of the time. Sometimes, ambient light won’t be enough, though, providing some blotchy colour blocks.

With decent lighting, though, even the dark scenes render nicely, and there’s even some solid macro abilities to be had, as well, though the iPhone 6 camera tends to prefer an abundance of light if you want to get up close and personal with things, like food, flowers, or bugs.

Trigger happy shutterbugs will find a speedy burst of rapid fire frames is possible simply by holding down the shutter, providing quite a few frames — we stopped at 40, but you could probably get more from a single burst — with the camera app providing a way to narrow these down significantly, even though these will all be stored as individual files on the phone itself.

Video is equally fun to play with, not just because there’s a faster 60fps Full HD capture, but also because the focus is always adjusting and readjusting, thanks to continuous autofocus, while slow motion can now be captured at 240 frames per second, provided you don’t mind dropping to 720p HD (1280×720).

An image from the camera of the Apple iPhone 6.

Over to the front-facing camera, and while little has changed, it does appear to be a little brighter than its predecessor, even though the megapixels have stayed the same.

On this one, you’re going to find people complaining regardless, because while the megapixels haven’t nudged from 1.2mp — and they probably should have — we suspect Apple has taken the view of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” with this one.

The fact of the matter is, while devices like the HTC One M8 carry a 5 megapixel front facing camera, and others run the gamut between 2 and 13, Apple’s 1.2 megapixel front-facing shooter still provides solid colours, reasonable sharpness, and enough for most people to indulge the habit that is frequent self-portraiture shooting.

You may be begging for more, but you won’t mind having more of the same, we suspect.