Let's just start with this: The iPhone 6 is the best smartphone ever made.
But it's not perfect. Like any smartphone, there are some things about the iPhone 6 that will drive you batty.
First, here's what you'll love about the iPhone 6. 1) The rounded edges. The iPhone 6 feels really, really good in your hand.
It's insanely thin and light, and there are hardly any square or jagged
edges on the device. The vibrate toggle switch is the big exception --
it nicked me a couple of times when I was pulling the iPhone out of my
pocket.
The curves give the iPhone 6 a less distinctive look
than some of its predecessors and other smartphones on the market. But
what the iPhone 6 sacrifices in appearance it makes up in usability. I
don't want to put the iPhone 6 down when I'm holding it.
2) The camera. Ironically, the ugliest part of the iPhone 6 helps deliver its most beautiful features.
The iPhone 6's camera juts out of the phone's back by about a
millimeter, and the obsessive part of me kept wanting to pop it back in.
But whatever Apple got out of that millimeter was worth it.
How much does your iPhone really cost?
Photos are clear just about every time. It performs masterfully in
weird lighting situations, such as when the subject is in a shadow but
the sun is shining brightly. It takes photos remarkably quickly and --
most importantly for photo-taking dullards like me -- without any fuss.
And the front-facing camera also takes surprisingly good photos for the
selfie-taking types.
The time-lapse and slo-mo video functions
seemed more gimmicky than practical to me, but some people might find
them useful -- or at least fun.
3) The screen. The
iPhone 6's display is gorgeous. It's noticeably sharp, and the iPhone
6's display even looks great when you're not looking at the screen
straight on. That's helpful, say, when you're watching a video with friends or showing photos to your family.
4) TouchID. There
is no shortage of complaints about the iPhone's fingerprint sensor
malfunctioning, but I found it to be wonderfully convenient and
accurate. It makes signing into your phone, downloading apps and buying
music a breeze.
So if it works for the simple stuff, Apple Pay is going to be a cinch.
Paying for stuff with your iPhone 6 supposedly will be as easy as
holding your phone up to a payment terminal while touching the TouchID
sensor. We'll see next month when Apple Pay launches -- but it sounds
promising.
Apple Pay turns iPhone into credit card
And here's what you'll hate about the iPhone 6.
5) iCloud. What an absolute mess.
When setting up my iPhone 6, one of the umpteen prompts asked me if I
wanted to "upgrade to iCloud Drive." For about 12 hours, when I went to
my iCloud settings, iCloud Drive indicated that it was "upgrading" with a
pinwheel of death next to it. And once it finally decided to finish
upgrading, it didn't impress me. I uploaded a photo and a document via
iCloud.com, and I have absolutely no idea how to view those on my
iPhone. There isn't even an iCloud Drive app.
Meanwhile, iCloud
says it will back up my photos via Photo Stream, but there's no obvious
way to manage that -- it doesn't even exist on iCloud.com. What if I
want to store photos on iCloud but not on my phone to save precious
storage?
6) iOS 8. There
are some really nice new features in iOS 8, including the amazing
Spotlight universal search feature, text notifications that let you
respond without opening iMessage, and all the brilliant camera software.
That's on top of excellent existing iOS features, such as the brilliant
Control Center quick tasks launcher, Facebook integration and of course
FaceTime.
But there's plenty to hate about iOS 8, too. Setting up an iPhone is an
unacceptably lengthy experience with way too many questions, options
and notifications. Siri still doesn't do anything particularly
worthwhile. Apple annoyingly added unnecessary steps for accessing and
clearing notifications. And none of the "widgets" in the notification
screen that I tested were particularly useful.
See Apple's new iPhone 6 in :60
There's also a lot of Apple bloatware, including compass (really,
Apple?), "tips," maps and Passbook. Others are redundant, including the
contacts, FaceTime and camera apps that you can access in other places.
But you can't delete or hide those apps -- the only way to clear them
off your screen is to put them in a folder labeled "crap."
So here's the bottom line:
The iPhone 6 is a gorgeous, incredibly well-designed smartphone with a
world-beating camera and some neat tricks. But Apple's software gets in
the way of the iPhone 6 being a perfect smartphone.
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