Iphone 6 và 6 plus review năm 2024

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus: Beautiful design, excellent performance, iOS 8 increases flexibility, unmatched industrial design, best rear-facing cameras on the market
iPhone 6 Plus only: Optical image stabilisation, large and Full HD screen makes a big difference

TIRED

iPhone 6 and 6 Plus: Expensive
iPhone 6 Plus only: Identical GPU means higher-resolution 3D games may run at lower frame rates than iPhone 6

You may have just bought an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus and sought a review to confirm you made the right choice. You may be teetering on the edge of an order and need a persuasive nod in the form of a positive review. You may perhaps be a devout Android fan, allergic to or defected from iOS, seeking 3,500 words to hate or regret. To these groups, let me save you time by condensing my thoughts into one sentence: the new iPhones are Apple's finest achievement as a smartphone maker, elegantly proving less really can be so much more in a cramped room of clones.

Design

With the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, Apple has to some extent conceded to popular consensus that there is room for a larger iPhone in this world. With the original 2007 model, there was little competition for a smartphone of its ilk. In fact there was no competition. Apple's release, by necessity of limited initial market size, claimed "this is the only smartphone you need, so we don't make any other" and it was apt for the era dominated by a thousand Nokia, Sony Ericsson and BlackBerry mainstays.

iPhone 6Nate Lanxon

But that's apt no longer. Android dominates market share in a thousand configurations. BlackBerry has a bleak market share; Nokia was swallowed by Microsoft; and Sony, well, it's not looking great. So Apple jumps in to offer a choice: an affordable, fun

iPhone 5c; a iPhone 5s for a smarter appearance; an iPhone 6, bringing cutting-edge tech to the masses and giving defectors a reason to return to iOS; and the iPhone 6 Plus, a step above cutting-edge with the added bonus of it appealing more strongly to markets that prefer larger phones, such as China and South Korea.

Apple wraps its new models in designs that feel thinner than they are. The iPhone 6 measures 6.9mm deep; the iPhone 6 Plus measures 7.1mm. Both make the iPhone 5s feel bulky and overly industrial in comparison. That additional thin-feel to the new models owe a debt to the shape of their glass faces, which bend down around all edges of the iPhone to meet a smooth aluminium rear chassis, itself bending from the back to meet the glass edge-to-edge. The result is a smooth rounded texture that hides a tiny but perceptible bit of thickness; the edges are just slightly thinner than the main body, and since it's the edges your fingers will mostly feel it's this thinness you appreciate most.

The iPhone 6 heralded a big design move: the new device was bigger and slimmer, at 6.9mm and the bigger iPhone 6 Plus measuring 7.1mmNate Lanxon

The iPhone 6, with its 4.7-inch screen, is 18mm larger than the iPhone 5s's and the additional screen real estate is immediately effective. Unlike the iPhone 6 Plus, which offers so much more screen it can offer a split-screen view for emails and messages etc, the 4.7-inch model offers no additional viewing options over the 5s other than fitting a few extra words on screen or making video- and photo-playback more comfortable. Its resolution offers the same pixel density as the iPhone 5s 326 pixels per inch and so appears equally as sharp when browsing the web and viewing photos.

But actually there is a difference to the screen: the number of those dense pixels has increased to 1,334x750 from 1,136x640. As such, almost all apps not developed by Apple need their developers to tweak their designs to take advantage of the additional pixels.

Until they do, iOS will ever so slightly stretch the layouts built for the lower resolution up to fit the new one. This causes some text, icons and logos to appear just a tiny bit less sharp. Some apps have already had this fixed, such as Evernote, Bejewelled Blitz, CNN, Instagram's Hyperlapse and Clear at the time of writing, and most should follow over the coming weeks or months.

But it does at least initially reveal the downside to having hardware that was baked and served before all the diners had shown up to eat.

It's not a roadblock to be concerned about however, assuming developers pull their finger out and optimise their apps; and for developers that do optimise the results include pin-sharp images and text, and more of it. At regular distances from the face (i.e. half an arm's-length) there was no difference in sharpness between the iPhone 6 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy S5, despite the latter having a higher resolution and pixel density. There was a difference between the iPhone 6 (4.7-inch) and the new Sony Xperia Z3 Compact (4.6-inch) however, which has a lower sharpness in comparison (it does, technically; it has a pixel density four pixels per inch fewer).

[GalleryThumbnails]

Apple iPhone 6 and 6 PlusNate Lanxon

Compared to the iPhone 6 Plus, however, there's a huge difference worth bearing in mind. Not just because the 6 Plus is almost an inch larger, but it has a million extra pixels: the iPhone 6 has a million of them in 4.7 inches, the iPhone 6 Plus has over two million in 5.5. That means not only do you have far larger images, apps and photographs, they're also significantly sharper, no matter how close you hold it to your face. Raise both devices a few inches from your eye and you can see the difference between the two without much effort, although once again in real-world use the difference is not so significant to warrant arguing over. Both screens earn top marks, but the iPhone 6 Plus gets a gold star to boot.

iPhone 6Nate Lanxon

Hardware performance

These are fast phones that offer consistently fantastic performance whether you're browsing the web, cropping photos or playing games.

The average consumer need know only that for the majority of uses both new iPhones stand at the top of their league, offering as much power as is required for everything physically possible to be done with an iPhone in 2014 and 2015. Once developers start taking advantage of the faster graphics processor on board, high-end 3D games may run better on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus than the iPhone 5s; at launch, those upgrading from an iPhone 5c or iPhone 5 and older will immediately notice a difference to their favourite apps.

Battery life for the iPhone 6 anecdotally showed a slight improvement over the iPhone 5s, giving about a day of use comfortably. The iPhone 6 Plus manages a day of heavier use, but went two days comfortably with only low to moderate use.

Those readers with an iPhone 4s and older will, naturally, notice an even more profound improvement to their visuals. We can confidently say an upgrade from an iPhone 4s is a great step. The same is true for iPhone 5 and 5c users who like 3D games and use lots of apps. For iPhone 5 and 5c users who don't use many apps and only play casual puzzle games such as Candy Crush or

Bejewelled, the difference you notice at first will largely be screen size and the physical design of the new phone.

The hardware, while dramatically improved, will not benefit you as much as, say, the improved camera, which we will come to soon.

So as an upgrade it's wise to base your decision on other factors. (For readers satisfied with the above performance explanation, skip to the next section of this review -- Photography and video. For readers looking for more granular explanations of hardware, continue this section for technical comparisons.)

Technical performance and graphical power in-depth

Inside both new iPhones is Apple's latest A8 processor, which is designed in-house specifically for iOS and the devices on which it runs. This is an important fact to bear in mind, because on paper the specifications may seem sub-par compared to Android: dual-core CPU running at 1.4GHz with 1GB of RAM. Let's look at Samsung, Sony and HTC's rivalling Android models: quad-core running at 2.5GHz with 2GB of RAM; quad-core 2.5GHz with 3GB of RAM; and quad-core 2.3GHz with 2GB of RAM respectively.

In numbers, it appears, the iPhone is running on half a brain.

But in use there is no noticeable difference. How is that so? It's down to Apple designing its own chip. All three Android competitors use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 801 processor, which powers several competing phones and tablets, on a variety of screen sizes, using many versions of Android, each modified by Samsung, Sony and HTC to offer unique differentiating software features from their cousins.

It's a tremendously capable processor and a leader in its class.

Qualcomm's faster chips ensure no matter how many simultaneous apps are running, background tasks such as downloads and app updates are taking place, or which version of Android being used, or whatever hardware Samsung and rivals build around it, the chip will be able to cope. To do that, it has more cores and higher speeds. It offers the same guarantee Apple's chip does for iPhone hardware, but it demands higher speeds, more cores and potentially more power from a battery to do so.

iPhone 6Nate Lanxon

Apple, conversely, knows exactly what its hardware needs and exactly how iOS will treat things such as background processes (it strictly polices them), simultaneously-operating apps (see previous parenthesis) and the memory and power afforded to each. Apple opts for efficiency and performance of currently active applications rather than allowing a number of previously-active apps or services to run on in the background, chewing up processing power, memory and battery.

It's a blessing and a curse, and one major reason Android fans prefer Google's operating system: the Samsung, Sony and HTC phones allow you a much greater level of flexibility and customisation of your phone.

The iPhone polices customised functionality with figurative batons and handcuffs, booting apps out of the app store that perform badly (if it lets them in to begin with), stopping apps running all but pre-approved activity in the background once your focus is moved to a new application, diverting all required processing and memory power to the currently open app at the expense of all others. It ensures apps always run as they were intended to and battery life is harder (though not impossible) to drain by means of user negligence or developer oversight.

To the user, you make the choice: the promise of consistent performance, or the potential for greater flexibility and advanced multi-tasking. But in real-world use cases, the Galaxy S5 which this reviewer used as a primary phone for several months feels no faster than the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, or vice-versa. But the iPhone does typically allow a developer to more confidently ensure their apps and games run as intended, which isn't always the case on Android many months and app installs down the line.

Benchmarks

Using the Geekbench suite of hardware analytics tools, the iPhone 6 Plus scored 2,909 in our multi-core test. This number represents the raw processing power on offer, higher being better.

The iPhone 6 scored 2,903 all but identical. (For anecdotal comparison, the Galaxy S5 scored 2,736 in the same test.) The iPhone 5s scored 2,577 (Apple's 1.4GHz A8 CPU is just 100MHz faster than the iPhone 5s CPU, which ran at 1.3GHz, hence the similar figure Apple's improvements to processing efficiency lay deeper than this top-level score).

Continuing our tests, the iPhone 5c scored 1,282. And because we know you care, the older iPhone 4s scored a low 412; and older still, the iPhone 4, scored a mere 206. Poor little mite.

It's with graphics performance the differences between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus become clear. The iPhone 6 Plus, with its 5.5-inch screen and Full HD 1080p display, has the same horsepower to drive it as the iPhone 6 has to power its 4.7-inch screen. So how does that make a difference, one might wonder?

The iPhone 6 heralded a big design move: the new device was bigger and slimmer, at 6.9mm and the bigger iPhone 6 Plus measuring 7.1mmNate Lanxon

We loaded the Relative Benchmark tool onto each device to run a real-time 3D graphics rendering sequence. For all intents and purposes this is just a sequence from any generic 3D game played out automatically to the best of any given device's capability. The iPhone 6 Plus managed a maximum 28 frames per second at the device's native 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution. However, the same test on the iPhone 6, rendered at its native 1,334x750-pixel resolution, managed a maximum of 54 frames per second -- a 48 percent difference. In the live benchmark, it was noticeable to the eye. The iPhone 6 Plus has a screen that offers much higher detail, but a GPU that cannot therefor render those images as quickly as its smaller sibling that offers lower detail. The choice of trade-off is yours.

Apple has introduced technology such as Metal, for 3D graphics, that reduces the amount of processing power is required to render, say, a 3D scene. But it'll take even less to render a million fewer pixels. At launch it's nearly impossible to see this fact make a difference -- trust us, we've tried. None of the apps even Apple is pushing as high-end games to test on the new iPhones render any better or worse on either the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. But long-term it will be something we may see more conversations about. But in the interest of objectivity here, there is no present need to factor this into a buying decision. Both iPhone 6 models perform equally highly, and compete with the best on offer in Camp Android.

Photography and video

Both iPhone 6 models offer significantly improved anti-shake and image-stabilising technologies compared to the iPhone 5s and other older models. The iPhone 6 Plus incorporates an optical image stabilising system not typically found outside the realms of dedicated digital cameras.

iPhone 6Nate Lanxon

The difference these systems have on photography (fewer blurred pictures in low light settings) and HD video (far reduced image shake) is astounding. Rather than write about this for 100 words, we produced a very raw video to demonstrate. In the short clip, we strapped the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus to our hand and took a short walk in London. The only editing applied here was to stitch all three videos side-by-side. All videos were captured at the same time at 30 frames per second and with all default settings in tact -- notice the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are much smoother than the iPhone 5s on the left-hand side of the frame.

Still images on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are almost certainly class-leading, but particularly in low-light settings.

Apple's image processing technology manages to reduce noise (a grainy appearance) on darker scenes with excellent results.

In good light, Apple's 8-megapixel photographs from the rear camera are sharp, highly detailed and with excellent colour reproduction. The automatic high-dynamic range mode, paired with the fast processor, allows for HDR photographs to be captured without any lag (on older models, it took a few seconds for an HDR image to "develop" in the software. It is now effectively instant).

Photo taken on iPhone 6 PlusNate Lanxon

Photos with dark foregrounds but bright light in the distance, for example, are more naturally balanced to the levels the human eye sees -- not perfectly, but enough so that a photo opportunity once lost to bad white balance and exposure is now not only captured but captured well.

A few examples help reveal how the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus perform.

Below, using a centre crop of the original image to reveal true image quality, an example of photography captured by the iPhone 6 Plus's rear camera; underneath a photograph taken in low light (for the sake of science we spent an evening in a swanky London cocktail bar capturing photos to make sure they looked good on your nights out -- it seemed only fair to go this distance for readers):

Photo taken on iPhone 6 PlusNate Lanxon

Photo taken on iPhone 6 PlusNate Lanxon

For comparison, here are the same scenes taken with the same settings on the iPhone 6:

Photo taken on iPhone 6Nate Lanxon

Photo taken on iPhone 6Nate Lanxon

iPhone 6Nate Lanxon

What's sad to see is that, in this narcissistic world of "selfie" obsessions, Apple hasn't drastically improved the front-facing cameras. They shoot in burst mode now, which is nice, but their low-light performance is still nowhere near the quality of the rear sensor, and the noise-cancelling system for getting rid of grain is weaker in comparison. That's fairly standard for the industry, but we believe front-facing cameras have become as important as the rear. As such, why do we still settle for such a discrepancy in qualities between front- and -rear-facing lenses?

It's something we hope to see change in future iPhones, and indeed all smartphones. Certainly the iPhone 6 models have a perfectly grand lens for selfies, but there's lots of room for exciting improvements.

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iOS 8

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus come with the most flexible version of iOS yet: iOS 8. It is a much-needed update to the controversial iOS 7, which somewhat shocked longtime fans with its colourful and "flattened" aesthetic. Visually iOS 8 looks the same as iOS 7; side-by-side you'd struggle to notice which was which.

But under the familiar design are some massive changes. Apps can now talk to each other (meaning, for example, a camera app can offer to send the photo you just took straight to the Instagram app, or Safari can use passwords stored in 1Password rather than just Apple's keychain).

More than just this, you can download new keyboards that offer innovating new ways to type (such as Swype; or SwiftKey, which can learn your conversation style from Facebook to offer predictive text when you compose emails etc); and when OS X Yosemite launches for Macs it'll let you answer iPhone calls through a Mac or iPad if your phone is in another room (it works remarkably well in our tests), or start writing a novel on the train from work and immediately resume editing as soon as you set the device down next to your iMac or MacBook's keyboard. You can send voice clips walkie-talkie-style through iMessage for no cost and did we mention you can manually control the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus's camera manually, adjusting focus, exposure, ISO levels and so forth by hand? Expect to see such features added to your favourite photography apps in the coming months.

Android readers will either be laughing or shouting at the moment because the above features are generally not iOS exclusive. "Seriously, you're excited because one app can send a photo to another app? Are you high? Android has done that for ages!" the detractors will cry, and they're quite right to. But under Apple's execution, while certainly arguably late to the game, they are features presented with consistent and easy-to-understand user interfaces that will become familiar to users from app to app to app. Learn once, use many. Similarly, because such features are only available to developers baking their new apps or updating existing ones, they don't over-tax Apple's hardware. That means they don't seem to eat battery life, memory or processing power.

It's the classic Apple approach: be late if you want, but bloody well make sure you're better and easier. Or else.

Conclusion

To plagiarise our own introduction to this review, the new iPhones are Apple's finest achievement as a smartphone maker, elegantly proving less really can be so much more in a cramped room of clones.

But it comes at a price. The iPhone 6 starts at £539 for a 16GB unlocked model, rising to £699 for the new 128GB capacity. The iPhone 6 Plus starts at £619 for 16GB and rises to a whopping £789 for 128GB (that's more expensive than a MacBook Air). We have tremendous smartphones on the market that include some fantastic affordable offerings, notably Motorola's Moto G -- a fantastic Android smartphone that can be bought SIM-free for around £150. It can't come close to matching the iPhone 6 models on the levels of design, features or performance. But you could equip a family with one each for the same price as one SIM-free iPhone 6 Plus and enjoy two years of holidays capturing great pictures, playing fun games and enjoying all Android has to offer. As a value proposition, the smartphone market has heated up fiercely enough to make this fact important.

However, Apple has set itself a new benchmark for exquisite industrial design, choosing only the most important part of the cutting-edge blade to use for making mincemeat out of most rivals, and it has once again blended significant usability improvements to its core operating system without adding clutter, confusion or drawbacks to performance.

Naysayers be damned, Apple has shown up late to sing at the concert -- but it's always the final encore that gets the grandest applause.

We consider the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 to be worth a nine-out-of-ten score. While the graphical issue relating to 3D gaming framerate is a negative for the iPhone 6 Plus, its ability to render a Full HD 1080p means the quality of the image is significantly higher than that of the iPhone 6, which only renders around the standard HD mark. As such, we feel these phones each offer a trade-off that keep them on par with each other as far as score is concerned.