iPhone 6: all the new features

 

Apple took to the stage just a little while ago, hosting a special event to announce the biggest changes to its mobile devices franchise since the introduction of the first iPad. Not only did we have new entries in the iPhone franchise announced, and bold ones at that, like the iPhone 6. but Apple is also venturing into a brand new market niche for the first time - that of smart wearables.

We knew that Apple has placed a big emphasis on this event when it rented a larger-than-usual venue for the keynote - rather than holding it in the Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Francisco, it picked the larger hall of Flint Center in its home town of Cupertino. The Flint Center is an iconic location for Apple: it’s the place where the company unveiled the iconic Macintosh 30 years ago in 1984, and that’s also where the colorful iMac started Apple's revival in 1998.

This back-to-the-innovation-roots keynote yielded the long-awaited iPhone 6, whose screen diagonal marks the largest iPhone display increase in history - from 4" to a 4.7" model - but also a variety of brand new additions to the Apple's handset line functionality. Let's summarize all the new features of the freshly-minted iPhone 6.

Apple iPhone 6 - all the new features

1. A brand new design

With the ultrathin design of the iPhone 6, Apple takes a place in our "Thinnest smartphones" ranking for the 7mm-or-below hall of fame. All the more impressive, since the new iPhone has a premium aluminum unibody chassis, and is very light, too. A slightly protruding camera  lens finishes the radical transformation from the current, more rectangular, metal-and-glass design, to the iPhone 6's slim unibody with rounded corners, and wide antenna separation strips.

 

2. Larger display

A 4.7" panel might be considered middle-of-the-road, but for Apple's iPhone franchise, which has always been centered around one-handed usage, this screen diagonal is a true revolution. This is the largest incremental increase of an iPhone display size ever, and it made the iPhone 6 grow quite a bit, too, both in length and width. Apple slimmed down the new iPhone so much, though, that it still leaves an elegant impression, clad in an aluminum unibody chassis.

 

3. Faster A8 chipset

Apple's homebrew silicon has gotten faster both on a per-clock basis, and on a method of production. As with the A7, the A8 is accompanied by satellite cores that specialize in various low-level tasks like sensor management in an energy-efficient way.

 

4. Brand new iSight camera sensor

Apple kept the iPhone 5s shooter resolution, but greatly improved on both the camera module, and the software accompanying it, introducing a new sensor, and more manual controls.

 

5. Focus Pixels

The camera has a brand new tech called Focus Pixels, which helps it lock focus and take a picture even faster than before. It's borrowed from DSLRs, and the pixels in question determine focus direction, as well as how far to move the lens. Thanks to Focus Pixels, continuous autofocus changes are automatic and almost undetectable.

6. Brand new FaceTime HD camera

The frontal shooter also got some love from Apple - the FaceTime HD camera has an all-new sensor and larger ƒ/2.2 aperture that lets in over 80% more light. The iPhone 6 has improved face detection for selfies and group selfies. There is also a burst selfie mode - the iPhone 6 can take up to 10 photos per second. Then you select the very best one. The camera also uses the new sensor to automatically take a single HDR photo when the moment is perfect.

 

7. VoLTE support

The iPhone 6 now supports Voice over LTE. It’s wide-band audio for voice that sounds crisp and clear. VoLTE for iPhone 6 is supported by some of the world’s top carriers, but is still not widely-adopted everywhere

 

8. Faster LTE and multiband support

The iPhone 6 can download 150 Mbps speeds now - if your carrier supports those, of course. It also supports more LTE bands than any handset, for better compatibility with any 4G-enabled carrier worldwide.

 

9. Faster Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi calling

The iPhone 6 can download on 1 Gbps Wi-Fi/ac networks now, as long as your ISP and router can supply those. Wi-Fi calling is a new feature for making high-quality calls when cell conditions are poor.

10. Barometer sensor

Alongside the M8 sensor control coprocessor that we know from the A7, the A8 chipset is able to process input from a brand new for Apple sensor - a barometer. It senses air pressure to measure relative elevation. The barometer is great for fitness apps, including Apple's own Health app you see here. The iPhone can now tell if you’re going up molehills, mountains, and everything in between.

 

11. 128 GB storage version

We've been waiting for someone to include a reasonable amount of storage for our ever-increasing media content consumption and creation, and it has finally arrived, in the form of rather pricey 128 GB iPhone.

 

12. NFC

The benefits of the Near Field Communication are numerous, as has been demonstrated by Android or Windows Phone handsets that have already adopted this tech. Now that Apple is onboard, too, one can reasonably expect a veritable explosion in the field of mobile payments and authorisation. In fact, the company just introduced Apple Pay, which combines seamlessly integrated hardware, software, and services, so you can combine the new NFC chip with the Touch ID security, and the Passbook cards and coupons, so that you can pay in Panera Bread, Whole Foods, in a Uber car, and a whole lot of other places.

 

 

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