Apple iPhone 6 Plus review: The original giant-sized iPhone

Sasha Muller October 15, 2014

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£699

Price when reviewed

“You can’t get your hand around it.” “No-one’s going to buy that.” Not our words, but rather those of Steve Jobs. He was referring to Android phones with big screens – rivals to the iPhone 4 way back in 2010 – but clearly times have changed. Apple has now done the unthinkable: not only has it released the iPhone 6, but also the king-sized iPhone 6 Plus. Apple has made a phablet.

Apple iPhone 6 Plus review: Design

The iPhone 6 Plus sports the same newly curvaceous design as its smaller sibling, but with one major difference: its beefed-up body frames a substantially larger 5.5in, Full HD display. This makes the iPhone 6 Plus something of a handful but at only 7.3mm thick, the slender, curved profile fits surprisingly well in the hand. With the rounded edges nestling comfortably in the crook of each finger, it feels just as manageable as the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 or Samsung Galaxy Note 4, and a little more manageable than the chunkier Nexus 6.

The extra girth bumps the weight up a tad, but this is by no means a heavy phone. At 172g, the iPhone 6 Plus only weighs 43g more than the iPhone 6, so it isn’t the weight that will cause problems for your pocket – it’s the size. And, despite the reports from users who have bent their iPhone 6 Pluses by sitting on them, or keeping them in a pocket, our impressions are that the iPhone 6 Plus feels just as sturdy and solid as other big-screened smartphones we’ve tested. Our review unit has survived several months of being rattled around in everything from messenger bags to cycling jerseys to tight jeans pockets, and it’s 100% bend-free. As Expert Reviews pointed out, the iPhone 6S Plus is full of genuinely new and useful features.

In practice, though, the iPhone 6 Plus often feels more like a miniature iPad than an iPhone. Hold it in landscape orientation and, for the first time on an iPhone, the iOS homescreen spins around into a landscape view. And while it’s nigh-on impossible to reach every corner of the display (at least without unusually long thumbs), the iPhone 6 Plus shares the iPhone 6’s “Reachability” function: a quick double-tap of the home button slides the upper half of the screen downwards to bring icons, buttons and address bars within reach.

Apple has also taken advantage of the 6 Plus’ extra screen real estate to add extra keys to the left and right of the onscreen keyboard in landscape mode, with dedicated copy, paste, full stop and comma keys spread across each side. This makes it much quicker and easier to tap out longer emails without constantly switching back and forth through keyboard panels.

Apple iPhone 6 Plus review: Display, performance and battery life

As you’d expect, the iPhone 6 Plus’ Full HD display is the centre of attention. Image quality is sumptuous from the off, with brightness soaring high enough to fend off even bright sunlight, and image quality that marries pin-sharp clarity with rock-solid contrast and rich, believable colour reproduction. And at 401ppi, the iPhone 6 Plus has the most densely pixel-packed display of any Apple device to date.

Interestingly, the iPhone 6 Plus’ display lags a little behind its smaller sibling in terms of its technical performance, but it’s not far off. We measured a maximum brightness of 493cd/m<sup>2</sup> and a contrast ratio of 1,293:1, and the colour accuracy is excellent, too. The IPS panel served up a very slightly wider range of colour than the iPhone 6, covering 95.5% of the sRGB colour gamut, and was only slightly less colour-accurate, with an average Delta E of 2.58 and a maximum deviation of 5.33. To the naked eye, the iPhone 6 Plus’ display is nothing less than superb; moreover, we noted none of the backlight inconsistency that afflicted our test sample of the iPhone 6.

In terms of power, there’s scant difference between the two. As the same 1.4GHz Apple A8 chip is the driving force in both handsets, it came as little surprise to see a nigh-on identical set of scores in the SunSpider, Geekbench and Peacekeeper benchmarks. What’s really impressive, though, is that the iPhone 6 Plus’ gaming performance doesn’t suffer due to its higher-resolution screen. Despite pushing twice as many pixels as the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus managed a very respectable average of 42.7fps in the GFXBench T-Rex HD test.

One area where the iPhone 6 Plus comprehensively betters the iPhone 6 is battery life. Even with the demands of GFXBench stressing the GPU, the iPhone 6 Plus achieved a projected runtime of 3hrs 26mins. This isn’t the best result we’ve seen by any stretch, but what’s impressive is that it maintained an average frame rate of 53fps throughout the test. By way of comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S5 lasts almost an hour longer, but it artificially limits the frame rate to less than 20fps.

The iPhone 6 Plus turned in some excellent figures in our other battery tests, too. In our 720p video-playback test, where we calibrate the display to a brightness of 120cd/m<sup>2</sup> and activate flight mode, the handset used only 4.9% of its battery capacity per hour – a figure that puts it just ahead of every Android flagship out there. It didn’t quite repeat the feat in the 3G audio-streaming test, but it still fared very well indeed. With the screen off, a pair of headphones connected and a podcast streaming, the iPhone 6 Plus used only 2.1% of its battery capacity per hour.

In practice, those numbers add up to a phone that is astonishingly long-lasting. Having spent a year in the company of the iPhone 5c, our experience of upgrading to the iPhone 6 Plus has been a revelation: we now regularly get two days of use out of the handset, and sometimes the best part of three. The only downside? The sumptuous screen and fantastic performance mean that we regularly find ourselves spending more time gaming than we ever did previously – and in our experience, lengthy matches of World of Tanks are a great way to kill the battery in short order. You’ve been warned.

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Apple iPhone 6 Plus review: Camera

Fittingly, Apple has equipped the iPhone 6 Plus with a superb pair of snappers front and rear. Apple hasn’t played the numbers game here – Nokia’s Lumia 1020 still rules the roost with its 41-megapixel sensor – but the 8-megapixel iSight camera has received a handful of behind-the-scenes upgrades, and the front-facing 1.2-megapixel camera has received a larger f/2.2 aperture to gather more light for those all-important selfies.

Although it has the same resolution as the iPhone 5s camera, “Focus Pixels” dotted across the iPhone 6 Plus’ sensor add speedy phase-detect autofocus to the camera’s list of talents. The dual-LED True Tone flash is still present and correct, though, and just as we found on the iPhone 5s, this does a fine job of providing more natural lighting in poor to non-existent lighting conditions – there’s none of the horrible, washed-out effect that afflicts shots taken with a single-LED flash.

The iPhone 6 Plus even trumps the iPhone 6 in one key area: its larger body has given Apple room to squeeze in optical image stabilisation. Disappointingly, though, this is activated only for low-light stills, so video recordings don’t benefit.

In practice, though, the iPhone 6 Plus is capable of capturing some beautiful shots. The speedy hardware inside means that the camera app flicks into view almost instantaneously from the lockscreen, and the lightning-quick autofocus does its bit to help grab pin-sharp impulse snaps. In most cases, the results are excellent: photographs look crisp and well focused across the frame, colours are rich and true, and the low-light performance is second only to the Lumia 1020.

Still photography isn’t the iPhone 6 Plus’ only talent, either. Like its sibling, video can be recorded in both standard Full HD 30fps, time-lapse and 720p 240fps Slo-mo modes, and the results are impressive in every case. And now that third-party apps like Horizon have been updated to take advantage of the new hardware, it’s possible to record 30fps video at a super-crisp 2,592 x 1,936 resolution – not quite 4K, but not a million miles (or pixels) away.

Apple iPhone 6 Plus review: Features and call quality

In terms of features, there’s nothing to separate the two new iPhones. We’re pleased to see that 802.11ac has finally made the cut; Bluetooth 4 is now accompanied by NFC in readiness for the forthcoming Apple Pay contactless payment system; and, of course, there’s the now familiar Touch ID sensor embedded in the home button. Call quality is nigh-on identical to that of the iPhone 6, that is to say crisp, clear and full-bodied. There is a difference, however, in speaker quality: the iPhone 6 Plus houses a larger, louder speaker than that of its stablemate. We’d have no qualms listening to radio broadcasts, music or even watching movies without using headphones. The clarity and quality on offer are highly impressive for a smartphone.

Apple iPhone 6 Plus review: Verdict

The iPhone 6 Plus will be simply too big, too unwieldy for smaller hands, but for those who can handle it, it’s easy to see the appeal. In situations where you’d normally find yourself swapping a smartphone for a tablet – on the sofa in the evening, say – you probably won’t feel the need with the iPhone 6 Plus. The display is large and sharp enough to make web browsing a slick, pleasurable experience, and the stormingly quick hardware makes for a device that never once slows down or lags in everyday usage. Factor in the superb screen and camera, and in many ways the 6 Plus makes a great halfway house between a smaller-screened iOS device and the iPad mini.

In our time with the 6 Plus, however, we did miss having a phone that we could sling in a trouser pocket or a cycling jersey without a second thought. If you’re the kind of person who values pocketability and portability over all else, neither this nor any of the giant-screened flagships from rival manufacturers will fit the bill. They’re all simply too large.

Even if you are one of the increasing number who doggedly subscribe to the “bigger is better” mantra, there remains one major hurdle to overcome: the price. Just as with its smaller sibling, we’d pointedly ignore the 16GB iPhone 6 Plus. With no recourse to add extra storage via a microSD slot, that simply isn’t enough to make the most of such a capable, powerful device. Set your sights on the 64GB model, however, and you’ll only get enough change from £700 to buy a packet of McCoy’s. It’s enough to put a lump in anyone’s throat.

Be in no doubt, this is a luxurious, high-performance phablet in every sense, but just as with the iPhone 6, Apple is demanding a daunting premium for its work. And with stunning, and arguably more versatile, phablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 also vying for your hefty wodge of cash, there’s one key question you should ask yourself before splashing out: do you prefer Android or iOS? Rest assured that whichever you choose, your money will buy you one of the best phablets out there.

Details
Cheapest price on contract	Free
Contract monthly charge	£33.00
Contract period	24 months
Contract provider	O2
Physical
Dimensions	77.8 x 7.3 x 158.1mm (WDH)
Weight	172g
Touchscreen	yes
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	1.00GB
Camera megapixel rating	8.0mp
Front-facing camera?	yes
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	5.5in
Resolution	1080 x 1920
Landscape mode?	yes
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
OS family	Other