Well, the iPhone 6es and their iOS8 have been out for about a week now, and, with more than 10 million selling in its first weekend on the market, the phones have had plenty of opportunity to collect a wealth of opinions about their strengths and failings. Here's the meat and potatoes of the review smorgasbord.
Most helpful reviews:
MacRumors
Engadget
re/code's
Phablet comparison chart
iPhone 6 and
iPhone 6 Plus stats from GSM Arena
Features folks like:
- Bigger screen (4.7 and 5.5 inches) and Superslim design
- The soft edges are more comfortable in the hand
- Batteries are reported to be lasted around 2 days with normal phone function use (calls, internet, etc. - GPS still kills the battery)
- Camera is excellent, focuses more quickly and has some great new manual control options
- Walt Mossberg at re/code found that the iPhone 6s Wi-Fi speeds were roughly double those of the 5s and about 25 percent faster than those of the Samsung Galaxy S5
- Swipe, quicktype, and third-party keyboard options in iOS8
- "Reachability" feature: Tapping twice on the home button pulls the top of the screen down, bringing everything easily within thumb range
- Voice messages, instant photos, instant video and current location through iMessage
- Can finally add third party apps and app shortcuts in the "Today" pull-down screen
- More and better options in mailboxes (mark all as read, get notifications for a particular thread, etc.)
Features that aren't as great as they could be:
- NFC can only be used for Apple Pay, which is not available yet
- Apple Maps did not get better
- "Hey Siri" only works when the phone is plugged in
- The landscape keyboard is a bit tricky
Features that make the phone worse:
- There have been reports of the phone bending quite easily in pockets
- It's still really expensive
- The camera sticks out from the chassis - it's designed not to get caught on pockets and things, but it makes it feel vulnerable
- Not water or dust resistant like Galaxy phones or the Sony Xperia Z3
- People don't like the way the white and silver look. They do like the space gray. None of that really matters, though, because we've got skins and cases that will make it look like a million bucks. Or a soccer ball. Whatever you want.
