On September 9th in typical Apple fashion the tech giant announced the release of… you guessed it — the latest iPhones. Since Apple is no longer good at keeping secrets, most of what was announced had already been guessed by avid Apple watchers. The “big” news in the announcement was of course the increased size of not one but 2 new iPhones. Some of you may recall the late Steve Jobs stating that the iPhone was the perfect size and that would not change. Well the iPhone 5 was taller and now the iPhone 6 and its ever bigger brother the iPhone 6 Plus have both taken growth spurts. Welcome to the age of the iPhone “phablet.”
Let’s talk some specs. Both new phones are running Apple’s new A8 processor claiming increased processor speeds by 25% over the previous Apple processor, not to mention 50% better graphics performance. The new camera hasn’t improved much; weighing in at 8MP, it is capable of taking 1080p video at 30 or 60 frames per second. That’s some super-sized video recording capability. Speaking of size did I mention that the screen on the iPhone 6 is 4.7″ and the 6 plus measures a whopping 5.5″? With this new larger size there is room for a new larger battery, increasing the talk time of the 6 by 1 hour and the talk time of the 6 Plus by 14 hours over the iPhone 5s.
Other big news regarding the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is increased storage. The new phones now come with your choice of the ever popular 16GB and now the new 64GB and 128GB of storage — yup, that’s right. 128GB of storage in a phone. What do these monster phone/tablet hybrids cost, you might ask? Well starting with the iPhone 6 the 16GB model is $199, the 64GB model is $299, and the 128GB model is $399. The 6 Plus will run an extra $100 more than the 6 for each capacity level. These prices are of course with a new 2 year contract from your friendly neighborhood cellular service provider.
By now you are likely to have heard about issues with the new phones and the new version of iOS. They are all true. iOS 8 is causing problems for lots of people. If you haven’t updated to the latest version of iOS 8 hold off. Give Apple a month to shake the bugs out. The same goes for the new iPhones. They are great phones, but like most new devices there are some bugs in the software. Regarding the bending phones all I can really do is shake my head. Why in the world would you put a skinny piece of aluminum in your pocket and sit on it. Thank heaven the glass didn’t break. If you want to sit on your electronics go get a Tough Book — they drive hummers on those little fellas. Have some common sense and protect your investment with a case, like the rest of us.
If you have the new iPhone 6 or 6 Plus I would love to hear how you feel about it so far. Go to http://facebook.com/JacobsCompanyBITS and leave your comments below the article.