Apple supersizes the iPhone 6, belatedly joins the big-screen era

“Things keep getting bigger at Apple,” Ian Sherr and Shara Tibken report for CNET. “At an event close to its headquarters in Silicon Valley on Tuesday, Apple unveiled the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, featuring upgraded technology to take better photos, deliver longer battery life and display more advanced apps.”

“The breakout feature, however, is the screens themselves,” Sherr and Tibken report. “The iPhone 6 features a screen measuring 4.7-inches diagonally, Apple said, and the iPhone 6 Plus will have a 5.5-inch screen. Previous generations of the iPhone had a 4-inch screen or smaller.”

“Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief, said the changes were the most dramatic yet for the product line,” Sherr and Tibken report. “‘Yes, they’re bigger; They’re a lot bigger,’ he said. ‘They are the best we know how to make and I think the best anyone has ever seen.'”

“Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research, agreed,” Sherr and Tibken report. “‘The new phones should dramatically expand the size of the opportunity for the iPhone, which has been artificially limited by its small screen size,’ she said in a note to investors. ‘The iPhone will now definitely have its largest quarter ever.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s about time, Apple. Better late than never, we always say!

As we wrote back on January 23rd:

When Apple finally extracts their collective head from their collective ass and ships iPhone models with larger screens, they’ll do more damage to slavish copier Samsung than all of their endless, plodding patent infringement cases combined.

BTW, for the sake of accuracy: Jan Dawson is a he, not a she.

Related article:
Apple unveils 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus – September 9, 2014

25 Comments

  1. I think it’s strange that Apple’s storage range starts at 16Gb on the new iPhone 6’s instead of 32Gb since the range is 16-64-128. Lots of people probably would have settled on 32Gb as the cheapest option over 16Gb but now will have to spend another $100. Me, I want 128Gb!

        1. Are you shitting me! Apple hasn’t exactly been the best when it comes to spending your money… It’s just that they make the best shit, so you’re happy anyway 😉

    1. Probably price break points. Apple increased price of 16GB iPhone by 100 bucks to make up for loss of 64 and 128GB iPhones being increased at $100 bucks more but actually costing more. I dunno…

  2. What a time to be a first iPhone purchaser! It’ll be good to replace my 13 year old plastic button, attachable VGA camera, crappy software, poor reception phone for iPhone 6 Plus! Now to choose a color?

    I’m curious, if anyone was set on a 4.7″ if they changed their mind to a 5.5″ what with the way the bigger screen handles some apps like mail or 1080 screen resolution, slightly better battery life, etc.?…

    1. Need to hold a 4.7 & 5.5″ in my hand at an Apple Store to see what seems best. The temptation of course would be to go bigger, just because you CAN! Both will help typing but lately I’ve been using speech to text so the keyboard is mostly irrelevant used that way.

  3. It is disappointing that Apple has left normal-sized iPhone without update. Most people still prefer smaller devices, and Apple was the king of this market without competition. Now Apple voluntarily going away from the market.

    1. Take your point but I think Apple really wants to push these new ones rather than split off with a third size and everyone would have moaned if they had kept the present size and one other size (i.e. no 5.5) so this is a better bet to cover all 3 while pushing the bigger 2. How the new ones sell will no doubt make them decide if a smaller than 4.7 is still needed. However I suspect that that the bezel will reduce so the 4.7in will in a year or two be little bigger than the smaller phones.

  4. Overall the iPhone 6 seems like a nice step forward, but some things surprise me.

    1) not much improvement in battery life for the iPhone 6. Nobody was asking for a thinner phone, and few of us are happy about an “equal or better than a 5S” battery life estimate. Apple again compromised on the iPhone 6 battery while packing even more power-sucking stuff like NFC into the phone. It seems if you want better battery life, you are forced to get the Plus. That sucks.

    2) Is there anyone else who feels that “reachability” is an awkward kludge? The home button us already used for a lot of functions already.

    3) Relocating the sleep/wake button to the side risks phone users to accidentally hit it when making a call.

    4) Apple is way behind in camera resolution, and “focus pixels” isn’t enough to close the gap. If Apple is going to thin the phones to the point where you can’t install great optics, then don’t bother leaving an exposed bezel around the camera. Some of us would have been far happier paying another $50 and sacrificing another 5 mm in order to get optical image stabiliization and a 10+ megapixel camera.

    5) I REALLY want a black color option back. Oh well, if Apple wants me to hide it in one of their black cases, then that’s what I will do — but from a 3rd party vendor that doesn’t overcharge for a simple little sleeve of silicone or leather.

    6) rather surprised that the 4.7″ iPhone didn’t increase the pixel density. it’s not terrible, but it’s definitely less than the competition and the iPhone 6 Plus offers.

    7) not a word about how many apps are actually 64-bit. If it’s such a big differentiator, let’s hear how much it matters!

    On the other hand, we FINALLY have:
    – a comfortable radiused edge again. Makes the iPhone 4-5S models look like antiques
    – 128GB memory
    – larger screen
    – 802.11ac

    It’s about time. Many of us were expecting a phone like this last year. Perhaps it is Apple Pay and NFC that held back the hardware release a year. Hope it’s all worth the wait.

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