Apple never fails to amaze us. Revolutionizing the way we see phones, it is always an anticipation to watch the keynote and hear about the latest gadgets. And being able to be so hush-hush about it, the official keynote that announces the features in details was made just yesterday. These guys always know how to make an entrance and impress. We peep at the Top 10 features of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and maybe you can decide if you still want to get it this September.
1) Back to their roots
After a series of iPhones with hard, pointed edges, it is nice to go back on the design with what the iPhone 3 users liked – soft, “seamless” edges. If you loved the curves, here’s the phone you’ve been waiting for.
2) Glass cover
iPhone users always have this inherent fear of seeing a cracked screen whenever we drop our phones. Said to be “ion-strengthened“, maybe now you will have less fear when you drop your phone on the hard floor, although we will not recommend this experiment, having a cracked iPhone screen is a very painful mistake you have to live until your contract ends.
3) Smile detection
Ah yes, selfie lovers rejoice! Here is a feature that will put a smile on your face. The smile and blink detection are improved for close up and for further shots, which means you don’t have to manually click the volume buttons that can cause blurness in your photos when you move.
4) Better camera
A new iPhone always lead to a better camera and for iPhone 6, other than the smiling and blinking detection, it comes with autofocus enhancing feature known as “pixel focus” which is usually found in high end DSLR cameras. It also comes with noise elimination, and better frames/second (for the tech-geeks: 30 or 60 frames per second; slo-mo video at both 120 and 240 frames per second)
5) Bigger screen and thinner phone
Apple faced so much pressure from its competitors that it has come up with a bigger screen size for 6 and 6 Plus, at 4.7 and 5.5 inches. Still comparatively smaller than other commercial phones out there (Samsung note 4 is 5.7″). The resolution numbers are also greater at 1334 by 750 pixels (326 pixels per inch, or over one million pixels, a tick 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. It’s a good start for those who love to watch videos on their phone!
Suiting the demands, iPhone is up to 0.27inch for iPhone 6 and 0.28inch for iPhone 6 Plus. It is their thinnest iPhone yet and it sounds impressive except iPhone 5S is 0.30inch – unless you can discern between ~0.02inch it is not a significant difference.
6) Landscape lock
Not only limited to applications now, you can access the home page on the landscape mode, swiping horizontally to find your applications. Now you don’t have to jailbreak your phone to fix it on landscape mode. It’s a lot like the iPad mini, except everything’s getting more compact and smaller.
7) Intense processors at work
Apple announced the use of A8 chips, packing over 2 billion transistors – and thereby giving you up to 25% faster processing power and up to 50% faster graphics. Everything is moving like our pace of life – too fast too furious.
8) Larger battery life
iPhone 6 plus is said to have longer battery life, and we have done up a table for comparison: AudioVideoStand-byiPhone 6 Plus80 hrs14 hrs16 daysiPhone 660 hrs11 hrs10 daysiPhone 5S50 hrs10 hrs10 days
Don’t take the battery life too seriously though, we all know how long our current iPhones can last…
9) Value for money storage
The new iPhone will come in storage denomination of 16GB to 64GB, then up to 128GB. Could this be the reason why they had officially discontinued the iPod Classic? You can see it as a more value for money storage space after they eliminated the intermediate 32GB storage, or as a marketing ploy. Your call.
10) Apple pay
Not exactly sure how that is going to work out, but once it happens, you can simply pay using your iPhone and Touch ID at a store, no longer requiring the need for cards. While the concept of digital wallets have been around for some time now, it might actually happen if apple helms the concept.
Apple has always been brilliant in their marketing. Will you be enticed to get a new iPhone this September at a pretty hefty price?
Writer: Leong Chee Sheng