Apple finally launched its bigger iPhones this week as well as introducing the first new product in years called iWatch. Despite them being vanity products, there is a huge lure for consumers to get them!
1. These are the thinnest iPhones yet!
Apple calls the design of the new iPhones “a continuous, seamless design”. What it means is that the surface is texturally unbroken and the cover glass (“ion-strengthened, referring to a process in which a type of ion is exchanged for another to make the glass more durable) meets the anodized aluminium backing without tactile differentiation. With a thickness of 0.27 inches for the iPhone 6 and 0.28 for the iPhone 6 Plus, the two are the thinnest yet of all iPhones. But here’s the clincher: at 0.30 inches, the iPhone 5s is only fractionally thicker.
2. We’re also talking of an impressive display
The 4.7- and 5.5-inch displays of the two phones boast diagonal screens with “Retina HD” displays. And these displays come with notably higher resolution: 1334 by 750 pixels (326 pixels per inch, or over one million pixels, slightly higher than 720p) for the iPhone 6, and 1920 by 1080 pixels (401 pixels per inch, or over two million pixels, and native 1080p) for the iPhone 6 Plus. The new screens also have broader viewing angles, and both the phones have dramatically higher 1400:1 and 1300:1 contrast ratios, respectively, compared with the 4-inch 1136 by 640 pixels (326 pixels per inch) screen with 800:1 contrast ratio found on past models.
3. Of course, both are bigger too
The screens of both the phones make them bigger phones as well. 6.22 inches high by 3.06 inches wide (the iPhone 6 Plus) and 5.44 inches high by 2.64 inches wide (the iPhone 6), compared with the iPhone 5s’s 4.87 inches high by 2.31 inches wide.
4. Good news: both will have zippier processors
The A8 chip, Apple’s second-gen 64-bit offering with some 2 billion transistors, Apple says, sports up to “25% faster processing power and up to 50% faster graphics.” With these impressive numbers, rest assured that they’re better than some of the fastest phablets available currently.
5. Their batteries just got much better
The iPhone 6 Plus’ large battery, which Apple says lets it do up to 80 hours of audio (as compared to the 60 for the iPhone 5 and 50 for the iPhone 5s), 14 hours of video (11 and 10 for the iPhone 6 and 5s respectively), an hour or two more than the iPhone 6 and 5s when browsing over Wi-Fi, LTE and 3G, up to 24 hours of talk time over 3G (versus 14 and 10 for the iPhone 6 and 5s respectively) and 16 days of standby (versus just 10 days for both the iPhone 6 and 5s). Now these are definitely impressive numbers we’re talking.
6. All hail the new cameras!
The cameras of both the phones are perhaps the coolest sounding improvements. The 1080p iSight camera in both phones is still 8MP with 1.5µ pixels and ƒ/2.2 aperture (like the iPhone 5s’s), but includes a new sensor that supports an autofocus-enhancing feature called “Focus Pixels”. It is the same as the ones we find in high-end DSLR cameras. Apple says that the autofocus in them is faster, and continuous (a great thing for video). With improved local tone mapping and noise reduction, you can shoot video at 30 or 60 FPS, and take slo-mo video at both 120 and 240 FPS. The cameras also include video stabilisation (the Plus includes optical as opposed to digital image stabilisation, meaning the lens moves to compensate for shaking), and the new phones can identify faces (and blinking, and smiling) more efficiently whether close up or further away.
And… now your panorama shots can be up to a whopping 43 pixels now.
The still-720p, 1.2 megapixel FaceTime camera has been upgraded, too, with a new sensor and larger ƒ/2.2 aperture, bringing it up to par with the iSight in that regard. It can also do automatic high dynamic range in videos (the iPhone 5s only supports this in photo mode) and has a “burst” mode, which Apple says will let you take up to 10 photos a second.
