IPhone 6 Reviewed

iPHONE 6

INTRODUCTION

The attraction of the masses to Apple devices is almost unfathomable. The iPhone has never been one of the most powerful handsets in the world, nor the smallest / largest, and yet seven years later it has retained (and grown) its unshakeable following.

However, in the last 18 months, the death knells have started quietly sounding, ringing in the distance as the best Android phones - once only a rival on spec or price - became genuine challengers and then out-and-out better handsets.

THE DESIGN

Apple's design overhaul is much-needed and as much as many could have hoped for - taking a number of cues from the iPad Air to bring a metallic, almost ceramic, shell that feels simply brilliant in the hand. Say what you like about Apple, it's a brand that's always put design at the forefront of its new handsets. Even the iPhone 5S, probably the most unimaginative of all of Cupertino's handsets, had a strong build that screamed quality in the hand, giving the user the instant feeling of something worth spending a lot on.

The iPhone 6 pushes that idea to the next level, losing the sharp edges in favour of sleek and rounded sides that make the device much more pleasing in the palm. It just feels so thin, but doesn't have the overly-lightweight feeling of the iPhone 5S.

There is a worry that this is a slippier handset than before thanks to the more rounded nature of the design, but then again with Apple (apparently) upgrading the glass in the screen to something that can withstand many, many more bumps and bruises before shattering, that might not be the horrid experience it might once have been.

The larger screen is certainly an improvement on the previous models - while I think 4.7-inches is going to be a tiny bit small for those that have lusted after their friends' Galaxy S5 devices with the 5.2-inch screen, it's still a very good size for one hand.

THE CAMERA

The camera on the iPhone 6 isn't much of a change... from the outside. It's still 8MP, and still doesn't record in 4K.

But that would miss some of the big changes: the f/2.2 aperture, the new iSight camera with superfast autofocus thanks to 'Focus Pixels' and the same trick repeated with the video, for smooth shooting even if you're moving around.The iPhone 6 has digital image stabilisation, unlike its larger iPhone 6 Plus brother, which packs optical image stabilisation for a likely slightly crisper picture.

But the cool thing is the phone can now shoot at 240fps, which is a fantastically sharp way of looking at what people are doing really, really slowly.

PERFORMANCE

The potential of last year's crazily-fast-on-paper A7 processor still hasn't been fully tapped. The new A8 processor on the iPhone 6 isn't quite the quantum leap the A7 was. It's a 64-bit dual-core processor just like the A7, but Apple claims a 25 percent boost in speed and 50 percent graphics boost over last year's iPhone 5S.