iPhone 6 (Release Date, Review, Price, Specs)

Many of you weren’t sold on the iPhone 5′s design. For some of you the taller screen was odd – it “looks strange at best,” said nebulaoperator – and for others it simply wasn’t big enough. Lions87a reckons even 4.5 inches would be too little: “popular phones like the Galaxy S2 and S3 have shown that people are pretty happy nowadays to accept bigger than what the iPhone 5 is currently offering.” Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, influential tech journalist Andy Ihnatko suggests that taller isn’t necessarily better. “The benefit of bigger screens is almost entirely in their increased width, not their length,” he writes. “A wider keyboard is easier to type on. Books, web pages, and emails will have wider margins and they’ll be more comfortable to read.”

John Gruber of Daring Fireball agrees that bigger isn’t always better, but he’s not a fan of wider, either: while he says that “navigating the full screen while holding the iPhone in one hand is worse,” rivals’ wider screens mean it “really is far more difficult to do anything on them one-handed, including typing.” A new set of patents filed by Apple, that we outlined on 15 October 2012, suggest that the iPhone 6 design might hide external-facing components such as the camera and flash from view using a polymer-dispersed liquid crystal window which can change opacity on demand.

The iPhone 6 will boost its processor not with the number of cores but with it’s software use. Even though the iPhone 6 will be using the A10 processor which is the fastest processor for any mobile device it will make the phone faster by updating it’s operating system to decrease the speed needed to run the current apps. Apple might also exploit the new technology IBM claims to have which can boost the processor speed without increasing the number of cores.

Operating System

iOS has been around for a while, and for many it’s getting stale. “I don’t think anyone can deny that the UI needs a refresh when you see widgets and live tiles on competitors’ phones,” says Vincennes, while Tubemonkey2000 says that “the current [UI] is so tired and old it makes it seem really basic, sort of like a kids’ toy.” Some say that “there are so many tweaks Apple could make to its OS to turn it into more of a powerhouse – icons that update with information, or extending the widgets in the notification bar beyond weather and stocks… Apple is taking things very slowly on this front.”

Price

iPhones have never been cheap, but in a world of credible – and cheaper – competition they look pricier than ever. Or maybe it’s because the iPhone’s price has gone up. Saltire is “surprised no-one has mentioned the price increase for the 16GB model”, while Gareth Beavis says that “we simply cannot see how a 16GB model can cost £529 / $199, but to double the memory will cost an extra £70/ $100 with no other changes to the design.” There’s no doubt that you pay more for the materials, fit and finish of an iPhone than you do for, say, a plasticky Android handset, and not everyone thinks that’s worth it. “£529 for a phone that is no better than my six month old Android shows the arrogance of Apple,” Alastairmack says, while Beavis points out that when you consider contracts, “it’s far and away the most expensive in the shop, and most of the time you don’t even get unlimited data.”

Features

NFC has, possibly unfairly, been dubbed “Not For Commerce” (or more saltily, “No Effing Customers”), but for many it’s the most obvious omission from the iPhone 5 – “not because of the technology itself,” says Fmartins, “but to really give the critical mass contactless payments need. Plus, I would love to use the phone as my Oyster card.” Apple is looking at Australian fingerprint technology for NFC mobile payments, so it seems that NFC could arrive with the iPhone 6.

Release Date

The exact date is unknown because Apple doesn’t want consumers to be ready and push off buying iPhone 5 until the 6 comes out. But the approximate date is in the middle of June.



Source