Apple iPhone 6 Plus review: Big, bold and beautiful

There is an argument that the iPhone 6 Plus is essentially a large iPhone 6. But when it comes to Apple, the conventional wisdom can be misleading. On paper, it does look like an oversized iPhone 6. It has a bigger screen and a little bit extra in terms of hardware. But let's not jump to conclusions.

In a world where Samsung popularised the idea of a 'great Dane' of a smartphone, Apple can't get away by adding just a large screen and some extra hardware to the iPhone. The mere fact that the competition is strong must have forced Apple to put something extra in the iPhone 6 Plus. Can Apple's first phablet stands up to the big boys in the market? Let's find out.

Design

If you go by the design, barring the size there is almost no difference between the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. But that's not exactly a problem. Like the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus has a sublime design, which just feels great in the hand. The contoured metal body feels solid, and yes it does not bend.

While all this is good, we feel Apple could have made a smaller phone, while retaining the 5.5-inch screen. Jony Ive's obsession with symmetry has led to a situation where the bezels or borders above and bottom the screen are equally big. While, the large bezels on the bottom afford a lot of space for the home-button, which also has the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, above the screen there's a lot of empty space that just adds to the size of the phone.

The only advantage that the extra bezel offers is when you use the phone in landscape mode. It makes the device easier to hold. But overall, we would have preferred thinner bezels and smaller size

At 7.1mm, the iPhone 6 Plus is possibly the thinnest phablet in the market. The svelte nature of the product helps alleviate the extra size of the product.

Being a phablet it is obviously quite heavy at 172 grams, but it is in the same vicinity as the Galaxy Note 4.

Overall, you do get the feeling that the iPhone 6 Plus is a larger version of the iPhone 6. And that means it has all the goodness of the smaller device as well as all its design warts. We find the iPhone 6 Plus is easy to hold and easy to carry, just like the iPhone 6. But at the same time we also don't like the gaudy plastic antenna lines and the protruding rear camera.

Display

The 5.5-inch FullHD display on the iPhone 6 Plus is downright gorgeous. It's one of the best smartphone screens we have tested at India Today Tech.

Resolution wise, it is not breaking new ground, as the 1080p resolution is now quite common in this age of QuadHD displays. But as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. While using the device we found the screen to offer fantastic experience.

We found the iPhone 6 Plus screen has perhaps the best viewing angles of any smartphone in the market. The contrast of the screen rarely dropped or changes when it was viewed at odd angles. This provides superior experience in while watching videos and playing games.

The brightness levels of the screen was adequate. In fact, the screen is slightly brighter than the iPhone 6 and in direct sunlight it was very usable. The auto brightness worked well and we never felt the need to manually bump up the brightness levels.

At the end of the day, the screen performed superbly in every situation. As for showing colour, in typical Apple fashion, the fidelity of the screen was true to life, unlike the oversaturated displays on Samsung's AMOLED panels.

Camera

The rear camera on the iPhone 6 Plus is slightly better than the one in the iPhone 6. It is also better than the one in the Galaxy Note 4 in most situations. Don't go by its lowly 8-megapixel resolution, this camera is a superb performer. It packs in optical image stabilisation (OIS) unlike the iPhone 6 and also has a phase detection autofocus system, which means it locks focus in a jiffy. Heck, it locks focus faster than you can blink your eyes. We termed the camera in the iPhone 6 as the best 'general purpose' smartphone camera. But the iPhone 6 Plus is slightly better largely due to the OIS.

Here are some test shots we clicked.

The advantages of OIS shine through in low light where images are slightly brighter and sharper than the iPhone 6, which itself is no slouch. In daylight, the results are similar which means there's a ton of detail and the colours look real, and mostly there's little noise. Even for macro shots, the camera is great.

Likewise, for the video, the iPhone 6 Plus is just stunning. It takes better videos than its smaller cousin. Videos are stable and they are well-lit in low light. Moreover, the new 240 frames per second and time-lapse modes offer something extra to the user.

Software

The software is the 'Achilles Heel' of the iPhone 6 Plus. Not that it is bad, but the fact that it does not go an extra mile to utilise the larger screen is disappointing. Here's where you realise the extra functionality found in the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 is what makes it special. On the other hand, the iPhone 6 Plus does feel like a big iPhone 6.

There are a handful of extras thrown in iOS 8 for the larger screen of the iPhone 6 Plus. For instance, some apps like Mail and Messages have a tweaked interface that makes better use of the extra screen real estate.

Even the Music app has a slightly retooled interface. The main app springboard also rotates to landscape mode, which is nice considering the size of the phone. Besides this, there's not a lot.

Unlike, the iPhone 6 Plus, we feel that the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 does a lot more. Admittedly, Samsung invented the phablet category and for a first generation attempt the iPhone 6 Plus is very good. Samsung has refined and honed the experience on its Note, and that's something Apple is unable to match, at least this year.

Performance

The iPhone 6 Plus, like its smaller sibling, performs like the starship Enterprise. Powered by the dual-core Apple A8 CPU clocked at 1.4GHz, the iPhone 6 Plus handled everything we threw at it with ease. The chipset is also Apple's second generation 64-bit CPU. Apple has added 1GB of RAM, which could prove to be less in the long run, but in our tests it was ample.

Apple claims it has engineered the A8 CPU in such way that it delivers sustained performance. It claims that the A8 does not slowdown like the processors that power Android phone due to rising temperature once the chip is put under heavy workload. In our use, we had more than 30 apps open on the phone and we never saw any hint of a lag.

Web browsing was a joy as pages rendered swiftly and scrolling was silky smooth.

Gaming was great on the iPhone 6 Plus thanks to the large screen. Games like ShadowGun and Rayman Run were very enjoyable and the graphics bordered on the levels of the PlayStation Vita. In our opinion, the iPhone 6 Plus is a really good gaming device considering its screen and complete utility as a workhorse phone.

Battery life and connectivity

The one area where the iPhone 6 Plus is head-and-shoulders above the iPhone 6 is battery life. The phone lasts a day on a single charge without even breaking sweat and many times it lasted us more than a day and a half. Yes, on average the phone last around 30 hours on a single charge without much trouble. That's like a good 10 hours better than the iPhone 6 and that difference is more than a Delhi-London flight.

Our test included 2 hours of phone calls, active use of two social media and email accounts, a lot of photography, around 40 minutes of web browsing and reading per day and streaming of music. Suffice to say we push the phone to its limits.

In terms of call quality, the phone is superb. We faced no dropped calls during our testing and always managed a minimum of 3-bars in terms of network coverage using a Vodafone SIM. It's ironic, but the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are perhaps the first iPhones that are good at making calls.

Should you buy it?

The iPhone 6 Plus is a great first attempt at a phablet by Apple, but if you expect the features and productivity chops of an Galaxy Note, then it will disappoint you. That's not to say it is bad. On the contrary, the iPhone 6 Plus is quite the sublime piece of hardware.

Additionally, the large screen and the quality and variety of the games on the iOS make it a great portable gaming machine, something that we feel the Galaxy Note 4 is not.

Compared to the iPhone 6, we do feel that it is a larger iPhone with slightly better camera and vastly improved battery life. Though both are enough to justify the premium and worth paying Rs 62,500 for it. But at the same time, we want to be clear that the iPhone 6 Plus is for someone who wants a better battery and a bigger screen than what the iPhone 6 offers. It is not for someone who wants a Galaxy Note with Apple's hardware and software.