“Here’s the best way to start an iPhone review: Goddamn do I love Android. I love its flexibility and efficiency. I love the way it bends to my will,” Mat Honan writes for Wired. “And I’ve spent the past couple years loving that I can get a phone that isn’t made for someone with doll hands. So when I first saw the iPhone 6 Plus, bursting with extra inches — and iOS 8, finally sporting modern mobile features — I thought to myself, this might be the phone that brings me back to Apple.”
“And guess what: The iPhone 6 Plus is the best, most exciting phone Apple has released in many years. I love this phone. The hardware is unparalleled, the app ecosystem is unparalleled, and the operating system has really matured. In fact, from a hardware perspective at least, this is the most compelling smartphone I’ve ever used,” Honan writes. “Mostly.”
“There is nothing bad to say about this camera. The camera hardware and software represents a new gold standard. Everything about this phone is, at first blush, a new gold standard. It even bends faster than other phones… Like a lot of people, I have a bent iPhone 6 Plus. It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s there: a slight warp right at the buttons on the side. Put the phone screen down on a table, and it wobbles. I haven’t purposefully bent it and I don’t recall sitting on it (but I probably have),” Honan writes. “So why is this one bending? I have a theory: It might have something to do with it being both very thin and very big and made of aluminum. The Samsung Galaxy Note3 is big, but it’s also 4 mm thicker than the iPhone 6 Plus and doesn’t have an aluminum back that, when bent, stays bent.”
“This is the best smartphone hardware I’ve ever used. It’s gorgeous and luxurious and seems almost decadent. I adore the display. I’m even more smitten with the camera. The battery life is a triumph. The applications are so much better and more varied than what you’ll find on Android or Windows Phone that those other two platforms seem almost untenable by comparison,” Honan writes. “Everything about it is wonderful, and if the bending doesn’t get any worse, and the scratches remain minor, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone.”
Tons more in the full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: With reports like this, the whole iPhone 6 Plus bending thing is losing its pure FUDness.
Lately, the thought has crossed our minds: Was iPhone 6 Plus designed with Liquidmetal in mind, but Liquidmetal, unfortunately, wasn’t quite ready in time?
MacDailyNews Note: The Apple-Liquidmetal deal is basically this: Apple contributes engineers and R&D – basically figuring out how to practically make Liquidmetal into commercial parts – and contributes their inventions back to Liquidmetal (via Crucible Intellectual Property, LLC, a Liquidmetal subsidiary) which gets to use Apple’s inventions in fields other than consumer electronics (sporting goods, aviation, medical, military, etc.). In exchange, along with an already-paid one-time license fee of US$20 million, Apple owns sole rights to use Liquidmetal in electronics via “a perpetual, worldwide, fully-paid, exclusive license to commercialize such intellectual property in the field of consumer electronic products.”
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Video: Apple iPhone 6 Plus bend test – September 23, 2014
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