Apple iPhone 6 review

Looking at specs alone, it’s a miracle Apple sells any iPhones.

Wave after wave of Samsungs, Sonys, LGs and HTCs have surfed on to shelves and into our hearts, each toting a bigger screen than last year’s model.

Not only that but these Androids have got bigger and better in every other way too. BIGGER cameras! FASTER processors! LONGER-lasting batteries! 

Meanwhile Apple has stubbornly refused to enter the smartphone arms race, hopping from a 3.5in screen to the 4in iPhone 5 and staying there for the 5s. Until now.

Enter the iPhone 6 with its 4.7in screen, A8 brain, iOS 8, NFC and bigger battery. Finally, Apple has an iPhone to compete on specs. And industrial design. And apps. And ecosystem.

It promises to be the best iPhone ever. So let’s find out if the reality lives up to the dream.

MAKEOVER TIME

Predicting Apple can be a risky business, but so far it’s followed a regular approach to design updates: we've had them every two years from the iPhone 3G onwards.

So, after last year’s iPhone 5s, we expected to get something wholly different this time around. And different is what we got.

Obviously the increased screen size is the main change, but it's far from the only visual difference. Like the HTC One (M8), the iPhone 6 has all-metal back with curved edges front and back rather than the flat, 90-degree edges on the 5s. The result is a phone that’s super-smooth in the hand with the joins between glossy screen and matte back almost unnoticable as you hold it.

And you’ll want to hold it – it feels amazing.

The curves make it superbly comfortable in use despite its increased size, while its thin profile also helps; it’s just 6.9mm thick, so substantially skinnier than the 7.5mm 5s. 

On the downside, the camera lens does now protrude from the phone’s case, which may not please everyone, while the distinctive light-coloured lines on the back at top and bottom won't be to all tastes either. The latter, at least, are present for practical as well as aesthetic reasons: with a metal-backed phone it’s hard to scoot the signal in and out, and the flush rubberised lines sort this. Certainly call quality on the iPhone 6 is strong and reliable. 

Overall, it's a beautifully built bit of kit. Where the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3 have to make do with plastic shells - albeit metal-style plastic in the case of the latter - the iPhone 6 feels wholly premium. Only the M8 really runs it close, and that's a far bigger handset. Every iPhone since the 4 has been a thing of beauty, and the 6 is no exception.

A SCREEN DREAM?

The iPhone 6's headline feature is its 4.7in display. And with good reason: Apple had only ever upped its screen size once before, and that from 3.5in to 4in. But let's not get carried away here - by anyone else's standards, 4.7in is not a huge screen. The Sony Xperia Z3 Compact - note the word 'Compact' - is only a smidgeon smaller at 4.6in. Compared to the Samsung Galaxy S5, LG G3 and Sony Xperia Z3, the iPhone remains a pixie in a land of Android ogres.

For many people, 4.7in will be the ideal size: big enough to offer a better viewing and gaming experience, without being so big that you can't use it properly. Of course none of that matters if the quality isn't there too.

Fortunately, it is. 

The iPhone 6 is no match in screen resolution terms when compared to the G3 (534 pixels per inch) and Galaxy S5 (432ppi). Apple’s screen has just 326ppi, the same as the iPhone 5s. But stats aren’t the whole story and one glance at the iPhone 6 confirms this.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 has arguably the best screen on the market: rich, vibrant and unbelievably detailed, although the LG G3 runs it very close thanks to the extra pixels on its 2K display. And the iPhone 6 deserves to sit in that exalted company.

It’s lower-resolution than its rivals, but more than dense enough to look glorious. It also lacks the occasionally over-saturated look of the S5; the Samsung display, though unequivocally beautiful, can still tend to the garish. As far as the LG goes, those extra pixels only really make themselves known when you’re reading the tiniest of writing. 

However we'd be lying if we said that we hadn't hoped for more. The 6 Plus has a full HD 1080p screen, as does almost every one of the iPhone 6's main rivals. While the 6's display is easily one of the best 720p efforts we've used, the differences between it and a full HD screen are visible if you look for them.

However, for day-to-day use, there’s a limit to what you can see - or at least to what matters. And in those terms, the iPhone 6 is as good as its keenest rivals. Plus, it’s just right there: the display seems so pressed up against the glass it’s like you’re making direct contact with the pixels.

CAMERA TWEAKS

As the millions of sepia-toned hipster-food-photos posted hourly to Instagram prove, the camera is one of the most important things on any phone. So you might have expected Apple to want to match the 16MP sensor of the Galaxy S5 or the 20.7MP on Sony’s Xperia Z2 and Z3. But no, it’s stuck with eight megapixels. Eight.

Fortunately for Apple, the combination of a good lens, advanced image processing and sublimely simple camera controls in previous iPhones has served it very well. Plus, there's more to a good camera than lots of pixels - after all, the HTC One (M8) takes great shots with a mere 4MP sensor.

Part of the M8's success is that although it uses fewer pixels, they're individually bigger than those on most rivals at around 2 microns. The iPhone can’t match that, but at 1.5 microns, the Apple pixels are bigger than those on the Samsung Galaxy S5 (1.12 microns).

Anyway, that's the specs out of the way, let's get back to the real world...

Innovations this time around include Focus Pixels. These are called phase detection pixels by other manufacturers and a couple of rival handsets share this feature, notably the Galaxy S5. Phase detection is faster than the more commonly used contrast detection and means nippier autofocus - which in turn should mean snappier snaps with greater sharpness. Last year’s iPhone 5s took pictures with no discernible delay anyway, but the iPhone 6 sure is fast. Quality-wise, there's not a huge amount of difference from the 5s - which means it's still one of the best out there.

Where Apple’s camera is consistently better than rivals is in its superbly simple ease of use. No white balance to adjust, no extra granular controls to fiddle with. Now, though, you can deliberately over- or under-expose shots. But don't fret that this'll be an unwelcome distraction from the point-and- shoot ethos. In fact, it’s wholly intuitive: press on the screen until the yellow exposure box appears. Next to it is a little sun icon with a line through it. As you draw your finger up and down it shows you how dark or light the final pic will be. Easy as pie.

Video recording is also improved, with HD filming at 60 frames per second and enhanced slo-mo (now double the frame rate of 240 per second). But there’s no 4K video as found on some rivals. Apple’s skill has rarely been to be first, so we're not exactly surprised as its absence. Still, it would have been a nice thing to have. Quality-wise, footage is smooth and looks striking.

iPhone 6 tech specs

Screen: 4.7in 720x1334 IPS LCD (326ppi)
Processor: 1.4GHz Apple A8 processor
RAM: (unspecified)
OS: iOS 8
Storage: 16/64/128GB
Battery: (unspecified)
Camera: 8MP 1080p@60fps, 720p@240fps rear, 1.2MP 720p front
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC (Apple Pay only), 3G/4G
Dimensions: 138x67x6.9mm
Weight: 129g

MORE POWER

Performance is always a tricky thing to judge on iPhones. Look at the stats alone and most high-end Androids leave it in the dust. But use one, and it'll often feel like the fastest thing since Usain Bolt's sliced bread. The iPhone 6 is no different.

The new iPhone has an improved processor, namely the A8, and whizzes through tasks without the slightest of pauses. The previous A7 was shockingly fast thanks in part to the new 64-bit architecture that arrived on that chip, and that's obviously retained here. And while the new model doesn’t feel any faster, it has more pixels to move around and is probably doing more in the background to boot. 

There’s also a new motion co-processor, the M8, not to be confused with HTC’s flagship. The co-processor now measures altitude thanks to a built-in barometer, so it can monitor when you are climbing or descending stairs. Health apps will make much of this and Apple’s own Health app has a dashboard to record your steps, cycling and more, made possible by the new hardware.

A BIGGER BATTERY

Fact: most smartphones have terrible battery life. Just try leaving home in the morning without having charged up overnight. And the more you use your phone, the more quickly the battery drains. 

It's a recipe for disaster, and one from which previous iPhones have hardly been immune. The iPhone 5s lasted a Standard Smartphone Day (SSD) - by which we mean you could just about get away with only having to charging it nightly, so long as you didn't really hammer it during the day. Otherwise, you'll have wanted that spare charger at work.

Happily, the iPhone 6 just goes on and on. In regular use, the phone performed for a full day and well into a second – a leap forward compared to the iPhone 5s. Additionally, iOS 8 gives you handy warnings about apps which are constantly making data connections, so you can turn the beggars off.

We'll be doing a full battery run-down test soon, at which point we'll compare it to flagship Androids such as the LG G3, but for now we'll just say that it lasts longer than any other iPhone.

FEATURES

The new hardware is faster and more powerful, some of it to service the bigger screen and updated iOS 8 operating software. Eventually, it will lead to more sparkly games, faster and more powerful apps. Already, Apple has added its own Health app, of which more below.

Sadly, some of the newest, spangliest of features on the iPhone can’t be reviewed yet in the UK. One of the most striking is Apple Pay, which uses a combo of the Touch ID fingerprint sensor and a newly arrived NFC chip in the phone to turn the handset into a contactless credit card. Demonstrations we saw last week in Cupertino were certainly seamless and speedy, so assuming Apple is able to do the deals with UK banks and credit card companies that it’s done in the States, this could be a very big deal.

Of course, Android phones have had similar features for some time. EE customers have the Cash On Tap app on various phones, including the S5, which turns the phone into a virtual Oyster card, for instance. But NFC hasn’t really taken off yet. Apple Pay could change this.

Other phones have fingerprint sensors, too, but the Apple model is superb not least because it’s effort-free. By resting your thumb or finger on the home button as you would to wake the phone, the Touch ID feature is invoked. The Samsung Galaxy S5 by contrast requires a swiping movement to make it work - definitely a little less intuitive.

Similarly, there's VoLTE - that’s Voice over LTE - which promises to deliver voice calls through 4G data; handy if your 2G signal is weak at home, say. It needs both handsets to be on VoLTE and for networks to play ball. EE is involved but the service hasn’t been rolled out yet. The feature is partly made possible by a faster LTE chip which can deliver up to 150Mbps downloads, when the networks can match this.

IOS 8

The iPhone 6 arrives running Apple's new iOS 8, available from today on all iPhones from the 4s onwards in addition to various iPads and iPod touch models

It looks mostly like last year’s radically restyled iOS 7, but if 7 was all about design changes, 8 is all about openness, customisation and communication. 

There are immediate benefits to apps such as Messages, which will now let you easily send voice files, photos and videos at the touch of a button in the text area. And below that you'll find the all-new predictive keyboard, which aims to guess which word you’re about to type before you’ve keyed in the first letter. This is splendid and works well. Third-party companies such as the excellent Swiftkey are also now able to produce their own keyboards for the iPhone – something Apple hadn’t permitted until now.

Bigger improvements still include Handoff, which enables you to start tapping an email out on your iPhone keyboard and then carry it on seamlessly on a Mac using the latest Yosemite software. This also means that when a phone call comes in you can answer it on your Mac or on another Apple device – handy if your phone is snuggling on the windowsill where the mobile phone signal is strongest while you’re ensconced next to the TV in the other room. We weren't able to test these features, as Yosemite is still in beta release mode, but we'll update this review as soon as we're able.

Most importantly of all, there’s the new Health app, which allows other apps to contribute to the fitness monitoring that Health collates. This is another feature that’s in its early stages and it’s going to be interesting to see what happens if you have multiple fitness devices which report different step counts, for example. Apple stresses that each app only takes part if you give it permission.

Still, the basic app looks pretty neat, with the restrained, classy styling you’d expect, though Samsung's S Health app looks spiffy, too and both are outclassed by the LifeLog software on Sony’s phones.

And finally there’s iCloud Drive, which brings Apple up to date with the document-sharing capabilities other platforms already boast. Just as with iCloud, which syncs your contacts, calendars and more across multiple devices, iCloud Drive saves documents across all of your Apple gadgets and on icloud.com.

VERDICT

In order to really judge the iPhone 6 you first have to consider what it's not.

It's not a mega-screened wannabe phablet. It's not a 2K-display-packing pixel king. It's not the most powerful phone ever, it's not the most megapixelly phone ever, it's not even the longest-lastingest phone ever. The best Androids still beat it on all these counts.

But that's just specs. What it is, is the best iPhone ever.

It's a real looker, with an amazingly slim and deeply attractive build. It feels lovely in the hand, despite the extra size. It has the best screen of any iPhone - big enough to be useful, with gorgeous colours. It's the most powerful iPhone ever, even if in use all you'll know is that it feels very fast. It has the best battery of any iPhone ever, lasting well into a second day. And it also packs some of Apple's biggest software innovations in years, although we'll have to wait for the likes of Apple Pay to make their way over here.

The iPhone 5s, for all its qualities, didn't do enough to put Apple back on top. It just lagged too far behind its Android rivals in key areas. 

But the iPhone 6, with its combination of fresh new form factor, the upcoming links to desktop via Yosemite and the promise of Apple Pay, might just do the trick.

Charging the iPhone 6 is one of the least expensive things you'll do all year

How much would you guess it costs to charge a smartphone for an entire year? That's a hard question to answer because it is likely something that you have never thought about before. Well, we've got the answer (at least for Apple's new devices); and, it turns out that charging your iPhone 6 is one of the least expensive things you'll do all year.

Opower has looked into the issue and has concluded that it takes 10.5 watt-hours of electricity to fully charge the iPhone 6 once. Assuming you charge it once per day, every day for one year, that comes out to be 3832.5 watt-hours (aka 3.8325 kilowatt-hours). If you take the U.S. average cost of electricity as 12.29 cents per kilowatt-hour, that adds up to a mere $0.47 per year to charge your iPhone 6. The iPhone 6 Plus and its bigger battery would cost $0.52 per year, because it would require about 4.2 kilowatt-hours. There aren't many things that you have to pay for that only cost 50 cents per year. 

The numbers may be tiny on an individual level, but when you consider that Apple sold 10 million iPhones in the first weekend, that alone makes up about $5 million in energy costs. That's a sobering thought, considering a smartphone is one of the least power-hungry devices in your home, and also considering that the average person in Haiti uses just 32 kilowatt-hours of electricity in total for one year. 

The big trouble with the study is that the only comparison it gives is to the iPhone 5, which cost $0.41 per year to charge. We would have loved to see these numbers for other popular phones in the Android and Windows Phone world. The cost appears to be somewhat correlated to battery size, but at a certain point, you could start charging every other day, which would bring the cost back down again. So, we would assume there are some devices out there that would cost significantly less than an iPhone to charge.

BlackBerry might be prepping a hybrid touchscreen smartphone with a hidable keypad

Back when Joch Chen initally hinted that the company will be putting emphasis on top-end QWERTY-toting smarpthones in the future (as enterprise purportedly favored these over all-touscreen ones), little did we suspect that the unorthodox and squareish BlackBerry Passport is in the pipeline. Well, the latter is already a fact, but it seems that BlackBerry might be prepping something even more curious and compelling.

One of the more recent patent applications that BlackBerry has filed with the USPTO describes a device, codenamed “Visa” or “Victoria”, which will have both a large touchscreen and a swiveling two-row keypad, which can be neatly hidden thanks to a mechanism at the bottom of the device. At all times, a single row of keys will remain at the user's disposal under the bottom of the screen, and it is speculated that it will probably double as a trackpad, similar to the keyboard found on the BlackBerry Passport.

It gets even more interesting when the alleged release date comes into play - it is said that the BlackBerry Visa/Victoria might see the light of day sometime in Q2 2015. Provided that BlackBerry is actually working on such a device, that is.

BlackBerry Passport is sold out as 200,000 units move

Ok, so it isn't a figure in the millions. Still, word that 200,000 units of the BlackBerry Passport were sold two days after the device was unveiled, is being seen as a positive sign for the model, and the company itself. The wide, square-shaped handset has captured the attention of the BlackBerry faithful. The device is made for the power using businessman and to BlackBerry's credit, the company went all out to build a flagship phone that not only is a great tool for business, but can compete with the flagship models offered by other platforms.

The BlackBerry Passport QWERTY also showed how Chen has his engineers working hard. Three rows of nothing but letters on the physical keyboard looks odd to be sure, but virtual keys offer punctuation based on what it is you're doing with the phone. Browsing the web? You'll see virtual keys for the colon and back slash. Sending an email? The "@" will be one of your virtual choices. The phone launches with BlackBerry 10.3 which includes the new BlackBerry Assistant.

If one wants to fine fault with the launch, the fact that 200,000 units represents a sell out indicates that Chen is taking a conservative road with the company. That might have been warranted with a device like the Passport, which is unique in many ways. It took Amazon all of 6 hours to sell out its supply, while BlackBerry's own website was all out of the Passport in 10 hours.

The next BlackBerry will be aimed at a different demographic. In November, we expect to see the BlackBerry Classic launched. This looks like the traditional BlackBerry Q10 with a full physical QWERTY, but adds things like a trackpad, and function keys that were removed on newer 'Berry models.

Will your bent Apple iPhone 6 Plus get replaced for free?

When Antennagate affected Apple iPhone 4 users back in 2010, Apple sent out rubber bumpers for free, in order to prevent the user from having his body negatively affect the signal reception on the phone. But now,Apple iPhone 6 Plus users are dealing with Bentgate, which revolves around the propensity of the phablet to bend while resting in a user's front pocket. All of these units are under warranty.

Still, an Apple rep questioned about whether Apple would replace a bent iPhone 6 Plus, said that each unit will have to undergo a Visual Mechanical Inspection. If the unit passes, the handset will be exchanged for a free replacement. Otherwise, the phone's owner will be responsible for the cost of a new model. For Apple to cover the cost of a new unit, the bending has to be the result of unintentional behavior. So if you posted a video on You Tube demonstrating how you bent your iPhone 6 Plus, you might be out of luck.

"(Whether Apple will give you a free replacement) is 100 percent up to the Genius you speak with at the store. There is a test called a Visual Mechanical Inspection that the device will have to pass. If it is within the guidelines, they will be able to cover it. If not, the replacement would be a paid one."-Apple representative

Even before Bendgate started, the 4.7 inch Apple iPhone 6 was apparently outselling the 5.5 inch iPhone 6 Plus by a huge margin. Watching videos showing the iPhone 6 Plus turning into a clamshell phone is not going to change things. If you happen to own a bent model, you should probably contact Apple immediately with all of the documentation that you can provide. The aforementioned Apple rep says that "Apple is looking into this with an insane amount of detail."

Apple says only 9 customers have formally complained about the iPhone #bendgate

If you've been waiting for a response from Apple about the recent wave of #bendgate news, it is finally here. The response may not be as quotable as "you're holding it wrong", but it does have the same sort of denialist inflection. Apple has come out and said that only 9 customers have formally complained about a bent iPhone.

Apple went on to say to CNBC that with normal use, such a bend to an iPhone is "extremely rare", because Apple chose "high-quality materials and construction very carefully for their strength and durability." Beyond that, Apple says it performed rigorous testing throughout the development of the new iPhones, and tested "3-point bending, pressure point cycling, sit, torsion & user studies". All of that leading to just 9 customers complaining of a bent phone through the first 6 days of iPhone sales. 

Given the millions of iPhones sold, this is an extremely small number; and, given how difficult it actually is to bend an iPhone (for the most part you need to be actively trying to bend it, in order to do so), Apple may be right to downplay the issue. Of course, this response seems to misunderstand much of the concern from users, and it ignores that Apple's choices directly caused this. The concern is not that it is easy to bend an iPhone, but that this could develop into a much larger issue over time. (It isn't easy to bend. Just look at how much pressure needs to be applied in the video below to cause the bend. That is not "normal use" by any means.) So, the number of complaints for the first 6 days doesn't really mean much. 

The other issue with this response is that it ignores Apple's responsibility in this problem. The reason the iPhone 6 Plus can be bent at all is because Apple is too concerned with thinness and its unibody design. Had the device been thicker (like the HTC One M8), this likely wouldn't be an issue, nor would the protruding camera or the relatively small battery. But, Apple chose design over function, and now is not taking responsibility for the trade-off caused by that decision, even if the problem isn't all that widespread right

Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus against the world

Although they've been on the shelves for just a few days now, the hallmark Apple iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have already obliterated a few sales records during their launch weekend. However, that was practically a no-brainer - both the Apple iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus belong to the arguably most popular family of smartphones. They usually bask in a lot of popularity, but does this mean that they are the best smartphones money can buy right now? Well, as with most things in life, this depends on your personal taste.

Apple's latest and greatest have a tough competition against them, and the rivals are neither outnumbered nor outgunned. We are talking about a bunch of Android contenders that came out straight from the likes of Samsung, LG, HTC, Sony, and others. On paper, their flagships can surely challenge the iPhone crop in various performance- and feature-related battles, and although it's hard to determine a real winner in a real-world comparison, we made a few in-depth reviews that compared the iPhone 6 and its 5.5" counterpart, the iPhone 6 Plus, against a whole galaxy of smartphone superstars. 

Check out our in-depth toe-to-toe battles between Apple's latest and their gravest Android rivals. Don't forget to check out our reviews of both the Apple iPhone 6 and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, too.

Some iPhone 6 Plus units seemingly suffer from accidental bending

Several iPhone 6 Plus owners are complaining that their devices have become slightly bent, mere days after buying them. There’s a thread over at the MacRumors forums which contains reports and photos that confirm this. Apparently, the iPhone 6 Plus can bend if you carry it in your front pocket for too long.

Since the iPhone 6 Plus measures 6.22 x 3.06 x 0.28 inches (158.1 x 77.8 x 7.1 mm) - thus being both larger, and thinner than any other previously released iPhone - the fact that it’s more likely to bend under certain circumstances may not come as a surprise. 

Apple has yet to take an official stand on the matter. However, if similar reports continue to show up, we assume it won’t be long before the company releases a statement regarding the accidental bending. In any case, this doesn't look good (both literally, and figuratively) for Apple.

If you own an iPhone 6 Plus, let us know if you have any problems with it. If you don’t own one, but maybe intend to, check out our iPhone 6 Plus review here.

Teardown shows Apple once again pays $200 to build an iPhone

Last week, we saw the first teardown of the new Apple iPhones, and now the estimations have come in on how much it costs Apple to build each new handset. In the past, the estimated cost of building an iPhone has never been over $200 (estimations ranged from around $188 to $199 for various iPhones), and while the iPhone 6 Plus reportedly cost Apple more than that to build, the iPhone 6 is right on target.

IHS has done the math, and is saying that the parts and labor to build an iPhone 6 is somewhere between $200 and $247, while the iPhone 6 Plus costs somewhere in the range of $216 to $263. The range of costs covers the various storage tiers. So, the 16GB iPhone 6 costs Apple $200 to build, and is then sold for $649. And, when you pay an extra $200 for the 128GB storage model, it is only costing Apple $47 for the larger NAND flash drive. This means Apple has profit margins of 69-70% on the new iPhones, and given the rate they are selling, that should bode well for Apple's quarterly earnings. For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S5 cost about $256 to build and sold for $599.

As per usual, the most expensive component of the new iPhones are the displays. The iPhone 6 display and touchscreen costs $45, while the larger 6 Plus display and touchscreen costs $52.50. The A8 processor has had mixed results on benchmarks, but it has wowed researchers based on its technology alone. The A8 is built using a 20-nanometer process, meaning less battery draw, but it somehow is also more powerful. The A8 is estimated at $20 per chip, which is just $3 more than the cost of the A7.

Our iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus battery life tests are done, both trail the competition

For most Apple fans, the iPhone, irrespective of the generation, is above reproach. And in our experience, this is justified for a very big part. But the latest iPhones, including the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, have a very specific and undeniable weakness when compared with what competitors offer, and that weakness is battery life.

As usual, we put the two aforementioned iPhones though our custom battery life test, which attempts to estimate how long the average person will be able to use a given device if he doesn't put it down at all. With that in mind, the iPhone 6's score of 5 hours and 22 minutes is underwhelming, especially if you consider competitors from the Android camp -- the Samsung Galaxy S5, for example, clocks in at 7 hours and 38 minutes, while the new Sony Xperia Z3 managed the whopping 9 hours 29 minutes. Both of these have larger-capacity batteries, but aren't as thin as the iPhone 6 -- though that's one trade-off that not all would agree with.

Looking at the iPhone 6 Plus, things are better -- it scored 6 hours and 32 minutes, which is actually better than competing 5.5-inchers like the LG G3 (6 hours 14 minutes) and Oppo Find 7a (6 hours 6 minutes), but still trails a number of flagship Android devices from the last year or so. Still, the significantly larger physical footprint of the iPhone 6 Plus has obviously allowed for a more generous battery, and this shows. Check out the results below.

BATTERY LIFE

We measure battery life by running a custom web-script, designed to replicate the power consumption of typical real-life usage.

NAME	TIME HIGHER IS BETTER

SONY XPERIA Z3	9h 29 min (Excellent)
HUAWEI ASCEND MATE7	9h 3 min (Excellent)
SAMSUNG GALAXY S5	7h 38 min (Excellent)
HTC ONE (M8)	7h 12 min (Excellent)
APPLE IPHONE 6 PLUS	6h 32 min (Good)
LG G3	6h 14 min (Good)
SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 3	6h 8 min (Good)
MOTOROLA MOTO X (2014)	5h 45 min (Good)
APPLE IPHONE 6	5h 22 min (Average)
APPLE IPHONE 5S	5h 2 min (Average)
GOOGLE NEXUS 5	4h 50 min (Average

The iPhone 6 Plus almost doesn’t blend

No, Blendtec, the industrial blender manufacturer made famous by its “Will it Blend?” series of videos, did not get its hands on a new iPhone yet, but we suspect that could be in the cards sometime down the road.

Rick Ryan of slow-motion video footage fame, whose trademark is capturing the destruction of our favorite gadgets, usually by a well-aimed gunshot, picked up six iPhone 6 Plus devices on launch day. He immediately put the RatedRR team to work on executing a plan that involves six days of torture of the famed device.

For day two, they decide to mimic Blendtec’s modus operandi and determine whether or not they can make salsa out of the doomed iPhone. As it happens, blending stuff is not necessarily as easy as Tom Dickson, founder of Blendtec, makes it look.

It seems that the new iPhone 6 Plus is just a bit too thin for the blades in the blender to really do damage. Of course, the destruction was aided by Rick’s wrenching at the battery which quickly began to show signs of combustion. As with many RatedRR ventures, the future of the gadgets are usually grim.

Apple sells a ton of iPhone 6 units – Foxconn has a hard time following

Apple's iPhone 6 pre-order launch was a success, with more than 4 million sales in the first 24 hours. All the pre-sale units have now been sold out and are on backorder, which may last for up to 4 weeks, depending on the model you are after.

Meanwhile, Apple's main device assembler – Foxconn – is struggling to meet the demand for the new smartphone models. The manufacturer has 100 assembly lines running around the clock in its largest production site in Zhengzhou, China. There are more than 200,000 workers at the site, all allocated to the production of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plusmodels.

An anonymous source told The Wall Street Journal that all this effort yields 400,000 iPhone 6 models and 140,000 iPhone Plus models per day. As a result, the waiting time for iPhone 6 models is listed to be around a week, whereas the apparently-harder-to-produce 6 Plus models will take 3-4 weeks to get to the hands of anyone who orders them now. The source says that Foxconn is trying to boost the Plus' production, but a shortage of 5.5" displays is slowing it down.

The culprit for the lack of displays is production issues with the complex in-cell technology Apple uses for its displays. It is a tech that integrates touch sensors into the display, which omits the need to add an extra touch-screen on top, allowing for a much thinner and lighter display glass. This, however, is still a hard tech to implement and a lot of the yield is discarded by QC. The 4.7" displays come out fine – with an 85% output rate, however, the 5.5" glass seems to be a problem, as its output rate is only 50%-60%, which means that almost half of the produced displays are deemed defective or below the required quality.

Apple never had sapphire plans for new iPhones, and here's why

We all know that the rumor mill can very quickly take on a life of its own. There is a ton of information and speculation going around, and companies almost never comment on rumors, which really only serves to fuel the fires even more. This year, the biggest failed rumor was that of Apple's supposed plans to put sapphire glass on the new iPhones, and a new report claims that was a complete fabrication by the media.

Tim Bajarin of Time has talked to unnamed sources and concluded that sapphire was "never targeted for the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus" and the possibility of sapphire in next year's iPhones "hasn't even been decided yet." As much as the rumor mill hyped it up, Bajarin goes on to list the numerous reasons why sapphire was actually a terrible idea all along. Sapphire glass is thicker and heavier than the competition; it takes 100 times more energy to produce; it would "add at least $100 to the base cost" of an iPhone; it doesn't absorb impacts as well, and is more likely to break when dropped, despite being better with scratch resistance; and, it would hurt battery because it doesn't let as much light through, and would require higher average brightness. 

That's a pretty solid list of reasons why sapphire is a bad idea right now, but they are all reasons that were ignored in favor of the exciting idea of a new material, and the rash of patents Apple has filed related to sapphire glass. Apple is obviously still putting resources towards sapphire R&D, and is using the material for both the TouchID cover and the Apple Watch, but putting it in an iPhone is an idea that is untenable right now.

New Apple iPhone models use half the bandwidth for FaceTime thanks to H.265 codec

A little more than two years ago, we told you that the H.265 codec was coming to mobile phones to replace the current H.264 codec that was then (and still is) employed for video playback on mobile devices. As it turns out, Apple is leading the way on the Apple iPhone 6 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus, with the use of H.265 for coding and decoding of FaceTime over Cellular video. The phones also support the older H.264 codec.

The advantage to using the new codec is that it requires half the bit rate that H.264 needs, to offer the same quality videos. First released as a draft standard by the Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) in 2012, H.265 has yet to become widely used on consumer devices. It is speculated that the Apple A8 SoC could contain a specialized encoder/decoder module.

Some experts believe that the use of the H.265 codec could give Apple an leg up over its rivals when it comes to mobile chat. Signals Processing expert Matthew Fleming says, "This has the potential to give Apple a serious advantage in the mobile video calling domain where bandwidth is at a premium."

Apple is using the H.265 codec on its new phones

Original plans called for a sapphire display on both new Apple iPhone 6 models

A report published on Saturday reveals that Apple was originally planning to use sapphire glass displays on both the Apple iPhone 6 and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus. Sapphire glass was shipped from GT to the finishers in China, but there were problems producing the displays that would have been used on the handsets. The report, which cites supply chain sources, states that yields were just 25% or less.

The sources added that the fault lies with Biel and Lens Technologies, the company charged with turning the sapphire material into sapphire glass screens. The whole affair wasn't a total loss for Apple, as the sapphire glass that didn't pass QC were turned into screens for the Apple Watch. The report says that Apple will move the rest of the sapphire glass production for the Apple Watch back to Arizona, where sapphire will continue to be produced, possibly for later iPhone 6 units.

The good news here is that GT has shown that it can meet Apple's production requirements, which was a big concern. And according to the report, Biel and Lens' finishing yield issues can be resolved. Eventually, Apple will offer iPhone models using a sapphire glass screen. It all depends on getting the finishing yields up to a rate that makes using the sapphire glass less expensive for Apple to use.

BlackBerry acquires Movirtu; company allows one device to have business and personal number

BlackBerry has acquired Movirtu for an undisclosed price. The company's Virtual SIM platform allows one handset to have a phone number for business calls, and another number for personal communications. Each number can receive separate billing for voice, text and data. With Movirtu's solution, employees can switch between business and personal calls without needing to carry additional SIM cards or devices.

Those BlackBerry units that are part of a fleet of handsets being tracked by BES, will be able to have IT policies enforced on the business line while not touching how the phone is set up for personal use.

"The acquisition of Movirtu complements our core strategy of providing additional value added services, and it will leverage our key assets, including our BES platform, along with our existing global infrastructure which is connected to a large number of mobile operators around the world."-John Chen, CEO, BlackBerry

The new services that BlackBerry will offer following the acquisition, will be made available from mobile operators. BlackBerry will make Movirtu's mobile identity system available for all mobile operating systems.

iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus supplies may be limited at launch

This seems to be happening a bit more often than one would hope with Apple. Last year, supplies of the iPad mini Retina were scarce at launch, and now we're hearing that both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus might be in short supply when they finally go on sale next week. The word comes from the Taiwan supply chain sources that DigiTimes loves so much. 

Word has it that Apple has planned to ship 80 million units of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus between the release next week and the end of 2014; and, that should be plenty to meet demand, especially since there were only 60 million iPhone 5s units shipped in the same time frame last year. The trouble is that only 10 million of those are expected to by the end of September. And, that 10 million unit estimate assumes there are no issues with components or production. That might be cutting it a bit close, considering that Apple reportedly sold 9 million iPhones in the first 3 days following the iPhone 5s release. 

So, depending on how quickly Apple can get devices to stores, the new iPhones may be a bit tough to come by for a while there. We'd like to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here, because supply chain management is Tim Cook's expertise, but the numbers seem a bit too close for comfort. 

The iPhone 6 is here with a larger display and a super-thin profile

Almost exactly 365 days after Apple removed the veil masking its now ex-flagship, the iPhone 5s, the company has, like clockwork, just announced its successor -- the iPhone 6. In many ways the new iPhone serves as a reminder that change is inevitable, even for a seemingly monolithic company like Apple.

Indeed, the iPhone 6 opens up a new page in Apple's relatively short history of building smartphones. Perhaps most notably, the Cupertino-based giant is changing its ways in both the hardware and software categories, with a larger-than-ever flagship, and a more open, developer-friendly iOS 8. And while we're certain that, in due time, the industry as a whole will dissect the new iPhone and its updated software in a leave-no-stone-unturned type fashion, right now is the time to focus on the basic building blocks of the latest iPhone.

Design and Display

Ladies and gentlemen -- the rumors were true, and the dummies were real. The iPhone 6 branches out from the existing Apple design language, and though the elements that make up the entirety of its construction are not altogether new, the latest iPhone is its own thing. In fact, if you take a step back, you'll realize that this is the second major redesign of the iPhone family -- the first one being the transition from the rounded, pill-shaped iPhones before the iPhone 4, which, in turn, introduced a more rectangular narrative. 

So what does the above mean? We've found that a good (and factually-correct) way to think about the iPhone 6's design is to envision a mash-up between various iPod Touch and iPad mini motifs. That alone will give you a mental picture that will likely be closer to the real thing than apart. Of course, when thinking about the new iPhone, it's also important to remember that we're now talking about a significantly larger device, with a 4.7-inch screen. But while the width, height and weight of the device shot up (138.1 x 67 mm, 129 g / 5.44 x 2.64 in, 4.55 oz), thickness shrunk down to 6.9 mm (0.27 in), making for a very thin phone overall.

Going back to the display, the 4.7-inch IPS panel has a pixel resolution of 750 x 1334, giving it a pixel density of 326 ppi, in line with Apple's "retina display" philosophy and equal to what the iPhone 5s has going on. According to the company, the screen can crank its brightness to up to 500 nits, and sports an oleophobic coating that will keep the nastiest of fingerprint smudges away.

The silicon inside

The GPU of the iPhone 6 is 84 times faster than the one on the original iPhone, while processing power has shot up more than 50 times With the iPhone 6, Apple is making clear its ambition to continue designing its own CPUs, and the new quad-core A8 system-on-chip is as much a proof as one would need. In reality, the home-grown A8 is the third custom-designed Apple chip based on ARM architecture, but only the second based on ARMv8, signifying that we're again looking at 64-bit silicon. What's new here includes a smaller, 20-nm chipset with 2 billion transistors, all the while being 13% smaller than the A7 silicon on the iPhone 5s. Perhaps most importantly, however, the new chip's two cores will be 25% faster and its GPU will perform 50% better in comparison with the iPhone 6's predecessor. The new SoC also comes with support for over 20 LTE bands, which is more than any other phone right now. What's more, the iPhone 6 will also support LTE roaming, Voice Over LTE, and Wi-Fi calling. Speaking of Wi-Fi, Apple is moving to the 802.11ac standard, promising up to three times faster speeds when connected to a wireless network.  More power and features are, of course, only one side to the coin – efficiency is becoming increasingly important. While Apple is yet to reveal the exact capacity of the batter of the iPhone 6, the company did say that the new iPhone will offer up to 4 hours extra in 3G talk time, 10 more hours of audio listening, and 1 extra hour of video playback over the iPhone 5s. An improved iSight camera As we ourselves suspected, Apple is once again refusing to be dragged into an arms-race in terms of camera megapixels, so the iPhone 6 will stick to an 8-megapixel rear camera with a True Tone flash. The unit has 1.5µm pixels, and its five-element lens' aperture sits at f/2.2. Apple also claims that, because the iPhone 6's camera makes use of phase focus, the time needed for the unit to focus will be cut in half. The Cupertino-based company also revealed that the improved snapper can shoot slow-moes in 720p resolution at the whopping 240 frames per second in case you feel like 120 frames just weren't enough. Unfortunately, the unit on board won't have an OIS gizmo (Optical Image Stabilization) as was rumored, and will instead use a software implementation (digital image stabilization) to compensate for hand shake during video capture. As for the camera at the front, we're looking at a "new" FaceTime HD (720p) camera with an "all-new" sensor with f/2.2 lens. According to Apple, the new config will allow the camera to collect 81% more light for brighter selfies. Apple Pay: wireless payments thanks to NFC One of the biggest reveals Apple had in store for its presentation was the announcement of the company's Apple Pay service. The new feature will, together with PassBook, attempt to dismantle the status-quo, and try and usher us all into a new era of digital payments.  The way Apple Pay works is simple – the iPhone 6 has an NFC chip, supposedly nestled at the top of the phone, which will allow you to pay at a gigantic number of retail locations, including Starbucks, Subway, McDonalds, Macy's, Bloomingdales, Staples, Whole Food Market, and Disney and Apple stores. To achieve that, Apple has also partnered with Visa, Amex, MasterCard, and American Express, the combination of which processes over 80% of all transactions made in the States. Of course, other than promoting Apple Pay as an easier-to-use alternative to the traditional routine of whipping your credit card, the Cupertino-based giant claims that its service is far more secure, and essentially makes it impossible for fraudsters to... well, rob you. The way that works is that instead of simply stockpiling on your credit card info and then share it with merchants when transactions occur, Apple Pay will instead generate one-time-only, dynamic security tokens. In other words, as soon as a transaction is complete, even if someone was to somehow get their hands on said token, it'll be less than useless for them. iOS 8, now prime time-ready

Unlike iOS 7, which was mostly a design-centric update, iOS 8 will instead focus on functionality additions and keep the visuals of its predecessor. Indeed, Apple is changing quite a few things up, and is actually opening up its traditionally sealed-off platform. Let's talk specifics.

The notification bar is now more functional than ever

Perhaps one of the major improvements in iOS 8 concerns the notification bar. For example, in iOS 8, you'll be able to 'action' those right on the spot, meaning that you can simply swipe on a new notifications and perform a number of actions, like reply to a text message or like a new Facebook post. Best of all, the ability to directly interact with notifications won't be limited to the notification bar -- you can action stuff right from the lockscreen.

Perhaps as importantly, Apple is finally adding widget support in iOS 8, though these will be housed within the Today tab in the bar itself, and not on the homescreen (à la Android). During its presentation at the WWDC back in June, Apple demo'd a few possibilities for widgets, including ones for keeping track of game scores or even bid on items on eBay in real time. Obviously, more apps will follow suit, so the sky is the limit.

Apple is opening up

The Cupertino-based company has also taken steps to improve the software keyboard (which it now calls QuickType) on iOS 8, but that's actually not the surprising part at all. The unexpected part was that, despite the seemingly non-trivial tweaks QuickType got, Apple is actually opening access to the keyboard component in iOS for the first time in history. This means that third-party developers will now be able to create custom keyboards for people that are, for whatever reason, unhappy with Apple's implementation. 

For those unwilling to move away from the company's familiar layout, there's some good news. First and foremost, the built-in keyboard will now offer predictive next word suggestions, kind of alike to most Android keyboards on the market right now. Where Apple's solution may win out, however, is the promise that QuickType will eventually learn enough about your contacts and start differentiating between formal and informal contacts and change the entire predictive vocabulary set to better fit your needs. What that means in practice is simple: As soon as QuickType is certain that John or Jenny are your best pals, and Mark is your boss, it'll automatically cycle between a formal and informal vocabulary.

On a different, but related to the theme note, Apple is also, surprisingly, opening up access to the Touch ID fingerprint sensors for third-party developers for use in their apps. Once again, all the biometric information will be physically stored on the chip inside the iPhone 6, and even though apps can now make use of Touch ID, they still won't have access to your fingerprint. 

The improved Siri and the new Health app

Also receiving some much-needed love is Siri, Apple's virtual assistant. The improved Siri will now recognize songs, make iTunes purchases, and even control smart household gadgets that make use of the new HomeKit API. What's more, Siri now understands nearly two dozen additional languages, and can be summoned by simply saying "Hey, Siri!", though it remains to be seen if that iPhone 6 will allow for this when not inside the Siri interface and off the charger.

Price and release date

The 16GB version of the iPhone 6 will cost $199 on a 2-year contract, while the 64GB and 128GB versions will go for $299 and $399, respectively. You read that right -- Apple will replace the 32GB slot with a 64GB version, and is also making a 128GB model available for the first time.

Pre-orders start September 12th and units will start shipping out of Apple's warehouses a week later, on September 19th. The first batch of iPhone 6s will sell in the USA, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan. By the end of 2014, some 115 countries worldwide will have access to the iPhone 6.