Gadgetory

after years of avoiding the oversized smartphone craze Apple caved and announced not one but two newer bigger iPhones how well does iOS scale is the biggest iPhone worth it let's find out hi I'm Taylor Martin with PocketNow and this is our iPhone six-plus review brought to you by Squarespace the biggest changes in the iPhone this year are in hardware and that's a perfect place to begin for starters Apple has gone back to a unibody design trading the flat edges from the last four iPhone models for rounded edges that blend into a completely flat backside which is oddly reminiscent of the original iPhone the only break in the casing is for some polycarbonate spacers for the antenna in late April claimed eyesore for many the iPhone 6 plus the larger of the two is unapologetic about its size it's taller and wider than most other smartphones with similar sized displays like the Oppo find 7 a but it's also incredibly thin just 7.1 millimeters thick it's so thin Apple couldn't manage to fit the camera housing inside the phone so it protrudes about a half a millimeter out of the back which makes the phone rock when on a flat surface the iPhone 6 plus isn't exactly lightweight like previous iPhones either it's a hefty 72 grams plat paired with the slick rounded edges in the two-handed nature of the phone make this an unusually dangerous combination it feels like it might slip out of your hand at any given moment for that very reason we felt more confident carrying it in a case that's not to say the phone isn't built well though it's built with an exceptional precision that's evident from the way the glass just flows over the edge of the foam and how the mute switch firmly snaps back and forth and it feels substantial however both new iPhone models have faced some controversy of their alleged susceptibility to bending user reports of bending iPhones have spread like a wildfire across the internet but Apple maintains that the number of official claims of bent iPhone 6s are minimal less than 10 as of last week we'll put it this way every phone is susceptible to some degree offending under a certain force however aluminum phones in particular don't have the ability to bounce back quite as well as say plastic basic science will tell you that through normal usage our unit shows no signs of any warping or bending of any sort internally Apple has added and upgraded a few things like the new a8 chip which is a 1.4 gigahertz dual-core cycle-on CPU and power vrg x64 50 quad-core GPU and also tweaked some of the storage options confusingly leaving 16 gigabytes dropping 32 and adding 128 for power users it still has just one gigabyte of RAM and an 8 megapixel camera though the 6 plus comes with optical image stabilization and the battery is much larger this time to offset the new display size 11 point 1 watt hours or 2915 millionth hours Apple also introduced NFC for Apple pay and Wi-Fi a total ever is the biggest upgrade of all at 5.5 inches in 1080p resolution the IPS LCD is in line with most other flagship displays it bears an acceptable pixel density of 401 pixels per inch and comes with extra vibrant colors high contrast and a very wide brightness range that said it does air a little on the warm side still it's a gorgeous display that is perfectly suited for all sorts of media consumption it's what Apple did or didn't do to take advantage of that space that leaves us most perplexed and that brings us to software the iPhone 6 plus ships of the brand-new iOS 8 we've covered it in detail multiple times now over the course of several videos visually not much has changed since last year's major UI overhaul control center is a little cleaner and you may notice some minor differences here and there but for all intents and purposes it looks the same most of the changes are behind the scenes like extensibility which allows third-party integration in various parts of the OS when sharing a photo or a webpage there are more options than ever before included in the stock share menu you can toggle specific services off or on and rearrange them based on your needs third-party keyboards maybe one of the most requested features of all in the keyboard settings you can select which keyboards are active and the order they appear you can even disable the stock iOS keyboard while gesture typing on an iPhone is nice we found that the overall third-party keyboard experience is jerky at best third-party apps can also now display information in Notification centers today page most of these widgets are simply news feeds or general information for certain apps but which is like Evernote and cheat sheet provide a certain utility not previously found on iOS other improvements include healthkit family sharing for sharing app store napkins purchases across up to six accounts improved spotlight searches with wikipedia cards or movie info from IMDB Shazam song recognition from Siri and hands-free Siri activation while charging as far as specific software for the sheer size of the iPhone 6 plus Apple did almost nothing to take advantage of the extra display space an extra row of icons was added to the homescreen the entire UI now rotates a full 360 degrees Apple also included reach ability which we haven't found very helpful and some applications display in a multi pane view but there are no software features included that truly make use of the 5.5 inch display iOS 8 has the potential to be one of the most impressive software updates from Apple possibly ever don't get us wrong it's still the same iOS we know and love and third-party support is nice but Apple failed to capitalize in some areas and over-promised in others if anything I OS 8 feels like a rushed product the upshot is that the performance is seemingly unaffected iOS 8 on the 6 plus is as fluid as ever opening apps zooming scrolling switching apps and everything else is snapping and extremely smooth everything from unlocking the phone with touch ID to launching the camera happens in an instant and we have yet to experience any lag performance is top-notch gaming on the larger 1080p display is more comfortable and enjoyable than before and it never skips a beat one of the most surprising and impressive aspects of this phone is its loud speaker positioned along the bottom edge it isn't the most ideal location seeing as it's easily blocked and muted with the palm of your hand however it has some punch to it it's plenty loud and has a surprisingly full sound in that same vein speakerphone quality was great we had no trouble hearing colors even in very noisy environments that said regular call quality was more muddy than we would have expected we'd call it mediocre at best data speeds on the other hand have been great on Verizon Wireless here in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina also great is battery life we were a little worried the extra display could affect the stamina if Apple didn't properly scale the battery inside it did we have no trouble whatsoever in lasting a full day on heavy usage on days of lighter usage we were able to last well into a second day of usage on a single charge for more detail on battery life be sure to check out the full review on the pocket now site we're quite pleased with the camera as well it's still 8 megapixels but that's perfectly okay shots and full daylight managed to capture tons of detail and the pictures are vibrant yet accurate contrast is great and there's even a nice D focusing on close-up shots at the very least pictures are a little cool but the new built-in photo editor works wonders on photos with optical image stabilization we figured low-light shots would be noticeably better not so at least not initially low-light photos turned out just like before muddy muted oil paintings the 6 plus seems to capture more light at the expense of detail despite its Hardware stabilization however slide your finger up just a hair to bump the exposure level and your low-light shots might turn out even better we did so - some success in several scenarios overall the camera on the 6 plus doesn't disappoint it's a little upsetting that OAS doesn't dramatically improve night shots but we've been very pleased with most pictures we've taken with the iPhone 6 plus and trust me that's a lot of photos and all the iPhone 6 plus is exactly what we imagined it would be nothing more than an oversized iPhone and while Apple did little to take advantage of that extra space it made up for it in other areas like speaker quality battery life and even performance if you're willing to take the plunge on a 5.5 inch phone well not for everyone you might be surprised by how useful the extra screen actually is the phone is perfect for anyone who watches tons of video plays lots of games excessively texts or IMS and browses the web this is a phone that provides extra screen for doing more and for that we'd say it delivers quite well once again Ann Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this review was brought to you by Squarespace the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website portfolio and online store for a free trial and 10% off visit squarespace.com and enter the offer code pocket now a check out a better web starts with your website folks be sure to like this video and subscribe to the channel for more mobile videos in your sub box find us around the web on Twitter Google+ Facebook and Instagram at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin Casper tech on Twitter and I see you next time