iPhone 6 plus review

What is the iPhone 6 Plus?

Having stuck to it's guns for so long Apple finally ceded the point – people want bigger phones. The continued success of plus-sized Android models like the Galaxy Note series and upcoming Nexus 6 has backed Apple into a corner. And when that happens it tends to come out all guns blazing.

And that's just what it's done with the iPhone 6 Plus. The 6 Plus is like the iPhone 6, but much bigger. There's a little more to it than that.  The main difference remains that huge 5.5-inch screen, but there are a few other small differences. But why has Apple decided to super-size the iPhone now?  The growth in phablet sales has something to do with it, but so does the companion device that Apple recently announced – Apple Watch. With an Apple Watch on your wrist you won’t need to pull the iPhone 6 Plus out of your pocket or bag all the time. 

The iPhone 6 Plus displays all the hallmarks of Apple’s key strengths. Outstanding screen, quality fit and finish and a great all round camera are present, but there’s no escaping how big it is. It will feel enormous to current iPhone 5S owners who will initially baulk at its heft, but anyone concerned by its size shouldn't write it off. Read on to find out why.

iPhone 6 Plus: Design

The iPhone 6 Plus looks huge compared to some other 5.5-inch phones like the LG G3. LG worked hard to make that phone as compact as possible and achieved something of a miracle. It's a lot smaller than the iPhone in everything barring slimmness.

Apple, on the other hand, has used the same design that the iPhone 6 possesses and it doesn’t work quite as well with the larger size.


The main problem is the large top and bottom bezel. They’re big and they make the phone look chunkier than it could be. The effect is offset by the fact that the iPhone 6 Plus is very thin at just 7.1mm. It also comes with a typically accomplished quality design. The glass and aluminium back merge seamlessly together and the iPhone 6 Plus feels great in your hand.

It’s well balanced and light too at just 172g. You’ll happily hold it for hours and that screen is perfect for browsing the internet or watching movies on the hoof. 


Its size means getting to the more inaccessible sections of the screen with one hand can be a struggle and can result in some straining digits. Apple has thought of this issue and has added a feature to the iPhone 6 Plus that brings the top of the screen closer to your thumb. 

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Tap the home button twice and the active area of the screen drops, giving you access to icons, address and search bars. Unlike on the iPhone 6, which is much slimmer, this doesn’t resolve all the issues caused by a big phone. You’ll still find it a bit of a stretch to get to the sides of the screen unless you’ve got big hands, especially when texting.  Most people will need to use both hands to be comfortable in this scenario. Still, it’s an elegant solution that makes using the iPhone 6 Plus much easier than we expected.

Just as on the iPhone 6, the 6 Plus has the power button on the right hand side, about an inch and a half from the top. It’s reachable but it would have been better if it was a little lower down. It’s the same story with the volume buttons on the left.



Despite the slightly awkward location of the side buttons the iPhone 6 Plus handles well even when you’re using it one handed. It feels like a premium product – no-one can quite match Apple’s superb build quality. The iPhone 6 Plus manages to feel both solid and soft at the same time.

There is one area where Apple couldn’t quite get everything to fit smoothly into the body of the 6 Plus. The camera is a little raised from the back so it can fit the sensor with the addition of optical image stabilisation. It only comes out slightly and the edges are chamfered, so it looks good and doesn't snag on material as you put it in your pocket.


They better be large pockets, though. The 158.1mm tall, 77.8mm wide and 7.1mm thick body fits into tight jeans, but not with much to spare. Its thinness helps it slide into pockets, but it is larger than some other phones that come with the same size screen.   

For that reason the iPhone 6 Plus isn’t quite the design triumph we’ve come to expect from Apple. It’s very well made and feels great in hand, but is just a bit too big. LG has shown with the G3 that a 5.5-inch screen can be fit into a body that feels more like a phone than a phablet. It feels as if Apple could have tried harder to make a bespoke design to this size, rather than zapping the iPhone 6 with a growth ray.  

So, if you’re happy with the size of your current iPhone, or if you struggle with larger phones, then you should go for the iPhone 6 as opposed to its bigger brother. It’s a lot more pocketable and big step up from the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S.

If you do opt for iPhone 6 Plus, though, it’s well worth considering Apple's leather case. It adds very little bulk and provides a super grippy surface to ensure you don’t fumble your phone. The larger phone is little slippery thanks to its curved corners and greater width. 


Finally, we need to address the issue that has gone viral – the bendable iPhone. Apple has responded by claiming that there have only been nine cases so far and we believe it. We’ve had both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in tight jeans while cycling and for more than a week in day-to-day use. We’ve experienced no sign of bending at all. 

Time will tell if this is a valid complaint or not but in our experience they appear as solid, if not more, than many other phones on the market. This has also been verified by independent test. It seems to be a storm in a teacup that has been stoked further by those with an agenda.

iPhone 6 Plus: Screen

Apple is often accused of being behind the times when it comes to screen resolutions. The iPhone 6 Plus comes with the highest resolution display ever on an Apple phone. It’s a full HD screen – 1920 x 1080 – with 401 pixels per inch (ppi). Apple calls it Retina HD but in pure number terms it falls behind of the best android Phone. Both the LG G3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 come with QHD screens, which means a resolution of 2560 x 1440 and 534ppi / 515ppi respectively.

That sounds like a big difference, but it isn't really. You don’t notice the extra pixels much. The Korean phones are sharper than the iPhone 6 Plus but you’ll have to zoom into text or pictures to notice any difference. In most other respects the iPhone 6 Plus has them beaten. The screen is bright and copes brilliantly in bright sunlight. 

Colours are supremely accurate – they remain perfect at every angle and it has the best contrast and black level of any LCD-screened phone. It can’t compare with the perfect blacks that the AMOLED display on the Note 4 can muster, but the natural colours make up for it.

Screen experts DisplayMate also rate the screen on the iPhone 6 Plus, calling it the “best performing Smartphone LCD display that we have ever tested”. This is a very special screen indeed and you’ll love using the extra real estate to play games or watch videos.  

The extra space means that the iPhone 6 Plus comes with a bigger and better speaker than the one on the iPhone 6. It is louder but more importantly it also comes with more depth and low end. It’s still mono, but you’ll happily watch your favourite Netflix series.

One issue that is more apparent with the speaker on the 6 Plus is that the grille is at the bottom right where your index finger is when holding it in landscape mode. The iPhone 6 is narrow enough to allow your finger to curve and not muffle the speaker, but this is more problematic on the iPhone 6 Plus. Considering the size of the top and bottom bezels it’s a shame that Apple didn’t choose to place front facing stereo speakers like the ones found on the HTC One M8.

iPhone 6 Plus: Connectivity

It’s been a while coming but the big news is that the iPhone 6 Plus has NFC (Near Field Communication). It’s limited to Apple Pay so you won’t be able to use it to pair with other NFC enabled devices you might have around the home, like wireless speakers, but Apple Pay has a huge amount of potential.

In other respects the 6 Plus has everything you’d expect from a top-of-the-range phone. You get Bluetooth 4.0, AirDrop (Apple’s feature that lets you easily share content from your phone with other Apple devices) and Wi-Fi 802.11ac. That's a lot faster than the Wi-Fi on the iPhone 5S although you will need an 802.11ac capable router to take advantage of this. 

The iPhone 6 Plus also comes with a comprehensive 4G/LTE chip that covers 20 bands supports speeds up to 150Mbps. This means that it should work well on 4G networks around the world – a useful fact if you're planning on importing one or you travel widely.

iPhone 6 Plus: Performance

Apple's new A8 processor powers the iPhone 6 Plus. It’s an excellent system on a chip (SoC) that provides oodles of grunt for high definition 3D gaming and means that the iPhone 6 Plus is butter smooth in day-to-day operation. 

If you just looked at the numbers you’d be forgiven for believing that the iPhone 6 Plus is a lot less powerful than the Android competition. The A8 is a dual-core processor running at 1.4GHz and is supported by just 1GB of RAM. It sounds paltry when compared to the quad-core 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 and 2GB RAM of the Galaxy S5.

In fact, the iPhone 6 Plus performs better than the Samsung in some graphic intensive tasks like playing games.  

Interestingly, the iPhone 6 Plus also performs a little better in our like-for-like processor tests when compared to its little brother. The wins are small though, just a few percent points.

In the 3D Mark Ice Storm Unlimited benchmark the 6 Plus scores a hefty 17,740 while it manages 2,871 on Geekbench 3. These are very high scores, on par with the Samsung Galaxy S5, which is the fastest of big-name Android flagship phones, and almost 30% faster than the iPhone 5S before it. 

The biggest benefits of the A8 SoC, though, come from its graphical performance. The quad-core PowerVR GPU from Imagination Technologies is perfect for high intensity 3D gaming. Games look and perform brilliantly on the 5.5-inch HD screen. 

The increased performance comes with some other benefits, too. Touch ID, Apple’s fingerprint recognition feature, unlocks your phone quicker than it does on the iPhone 5S.

The iPhone 6 Plus also uses an M8 co-processor, a tiny processor that keeps track of all data created by the array of sensors. Apple has added a new measurement into the mix, a barometer. This means that the 6 Plus can also recognise altitude, so it knows if you’ve been climbing stairs or hills. Fitness tracking apps can now hook into this information to provide more accurate information about your exercise regime. 

The clever thing about the M8 processor is that it’s energy efficient. Battery life would be compromised if sensor data was constantly processed by the main A8 processor. It means that when you’re not doing much with your phone your battery doesn’t drain as quickly. It restricts phone functions when it knows your phone hasn’t moved for a while and is in an area with no signal. Clever stuff.

One feature that some may find lacking from the iPhone 6 Plus is the digitiser stylus. The Galaxy Note series is famous for it and while some people find it useful many others rarely use it. It is a useful addition and if you like taking hand-written notes, drawing or using a pen rather than a keyboard you might want to wait for the Galaxy Note 4. 

iPhone 6 Plus: Storage and Pricing

Apple has never provided the option of adding a microSD card into its phones and the iPhone 6 Plus is no exception. If you like to store loads of music, games or movies on your phone you’ll need to pay for the extra storage up front. 

It comes in three capacities: 16GB, 64GB and 128GB and that final version costs a fortune. In fact at £789/$949 for the top model the iPhone 6 Plus is the most expensive major smartphone we’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, the 16GB model (£619/$749) only provides around 11GB of storage after iOS 8 takes its cut. This means the 64GB model is the one to get. At £699/$849 it’s not exactly cheap, but 64GB should be enough for all but the most avid mobile media hoarder.

iPhone 6 Plus: Camera

The iPhone 6 Plus has an 8-megapixel rear camera similar to the camera found on the iPhone 6. It comes with the same new phase detection feature for faster focussing that Apple calls 'Focus Pixels' and allows you to change the light balance on the fly. Focus pixels help the iPhone 6 Plus focus a lot more quickly than the iPhone 5S before it. 

There is one important difference between the iPhone 6 Plus and the 6 – it includes optical image stabilisation. It's by no means the first phone camera to use it, we've seen it in Nokia phones in the past and the Nexus 5 last year, but it's the first Apple phone to have it.

What is Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS)?
Optical image stabilisation helps you take good quality photos by using a gyroscope to keep the lenses stable. This comes with some major benefits when you’re shooting. The most important is that you can get sharp, blur-free images even in low light conditions. 

To get the most amount of light possible the shutter speed of a camera is slower in dark conditions. This means that any slight hand movements while taking the picture are exacerbated, leading to out of focus images. OIS particularly helps eliminates some of issues associated with taking phone pictures one-handed, where you're less stable.   

The OIS on the iPhone 6 Plus (right) means less noise and better colours compared to the iPhone 6 (left)

In our test shot in low light conditions (above) the iPhone 6 Plus provides pictures with less noise than the iPhone 6. Those big pixels also mean it’s streets ahead of the Samsung Galaxy S5 in dingy lighting.   

In our test shot on an overcast Sunday afternoon you will notice that the iPhone 6 Plus’s shot is a little brighter and the colours more authentic. 

However on a bright and sunny day the differences between the iPhone 6 Plus and its little brother are negligible. In these conditions the extra pixels of the Samsung Galaxy S5’s camera makes it shine, providing more detail than the iPhones can muster. 

From left to right: iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Samsung Galaxy S5

In terms of video the iPhone 6 Plus shoots full HD, so it doesn’t quite match the 4K shooting that some other flagship phones offer. It does, however, come with sensational slow motion video capture that now captures 720p video at 240FPS. It’s easy as pie to use and results look fantastic.