The iPhone 6 Plus Mini-Review: Apple's First Phablet
by Joshua Ho on September 30, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- iOS
- iPhone 6 Plus
Battery Life
One of the big draws of the larger form factor is battery life. Due to fundamental scaling issues, a bigger phone should be able to achieve greater battery life than a small one. This is because a smartphone's PCB generally remains constant in size, so it becomes an increasingly smaller proportion of the overall device size. This leaves increasingly large areas where batteries fill in the gap. In order to quantify just how big of a difference this makes when going from 4.7" to 5.5", we turn to our standardized battery life test suite. For those unfamiliar with our testing, the display is calibrated to 200 nits and all background tasks are disabled in order to ensure that only the foreground task is active in our tests.
As we previously discussed, the iPhone 6 Plus performs quite admirably in the WiFi web browsing test. As expected, there's a healthy bump over the iPhone 6, but it's not quite a massive leap as a larger battery size might suggest.
Once again, we see a similar pattern with the LTE web browsing test. Since both phones are based on the same platform, it makes sense that their results track quite closely together as we're only scaling display and battery size within the context of these tests.
However, the web browsing test is a mostly display-bound test, even if there is an SoC efficiency aspect that can make a significant difference. In order to better test SoC efficiency and get an idea of the dynamic range that a phone has in battery life, we turn to our compute-bound tests. Unfortunately, Basemark OS II stops the test too early due to low battery notifications in iOS, so we cannot use that test for a proper comparison to other phones.
As shown in these charts, the iPhone 6 Plus manages to sustain a significant boost in battery life when compared to the iPhone 6, and performance is almost identical as well. It seems that the iPhone 6 Plus begins to throttle towards the end of the test simply because it has more time to generate heat rather than any real difference in cooling, as skin temperatures were also around 43C on the iPhone 6 Plus in this test. It's also important to note that the iPhone 6 Plus is rendering at 2208x1242 internally in order to keep proper scaling with the 163 points per inch system that iOS has, which accounts for part of the performance delta.
Overall, battery life on the iPhone 6 Plus ranges between about 20% higher to 40% higher depending on the balance of display power and SoC/baseband power in any given situation. Heavily display-bound situations will be closer to the 20% higher figure while more SoC-bound tasks will tend toward 40% or even higher. Purely idle situations should see even greater improvements as any situation where the display is off will see linear scaling with battery size.
Charge Time
Charge time is one of the key metrics for getting a holistic picture of battery life, as it's impossible to really understand whether a phone will be able to stay mobile as needed without considering recharging. In some cases such as a trade show or travel, it doesn't matter if a phone lasts 20% longer than the competition if it loses all the time gained in time spent on a charger. In order to test this, power is tracked from when the phone is connected to the charger to when it reaches the lowest power draw state on the AC adapter.
Unfortunately, the included charger is the same 5W charger that we've seen for years now. As a result, the iPhone 6 Plus is constrained by the relatively low maximum power that it can put out. Those that wish for faster charging should look into getting an iPad A/C adapter as the iPhone 6 Plus will charge faster when connected to it.
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ayejay_nz - Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - link
The 6 Plus review is just an extension of the very detailed 6 review.Spoelie - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
the improved pixel density is [definitely] visible. There are [definitely] performance trade-offs in GPU-based benchmarks, but otherwise Apple has managed to make this bump in resolution compromise-free. I [definitely] notice the improved resolution, /but this is a mostly subjective area that requires personal experience to judge whether the higher resolution has value./Overall, the iPhone 6 Plus is [definitely] a great phone
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Definitely!
anekin007 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Not sure how you're getting just over 3 hours. My 6+ is taking 4 hours to charge and other people in other forums are stating the same. With a 2.4a charger Im getting 2 hours and 40 mins. Hows the iPhone 6 charging faster than the 5s when the 6 is 1900man and 5s is 1500?kirito - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
excellent review. I guess many are still in shock.Duckk - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Kudos for the Dynames Gundam in the camera tests.techcrazy - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Why you guys not doing "Cellular talk time test" like you guys did with previous smartphone? You guys took your time with the review so why didn't you ?yofa42 - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
gosh, i sure hope there's no conflict of interest between new apple employee anand, and the website that bears his name.don't let them off easy on the bendgate. we want a see a real-world-applicable comparative (with note 3) strength test in bending moments throughout the length of the device.
there should be no entity too powerful and influential to call out. permanent deformation in real-world situations is a legitimate concern.
hlovatt - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Great in depth review, miles better than any others I have read with real in-depth testing. Very glad to see Anand's leaving has not affected quality one little bit.Still the best out there - thanks.
Parhel - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
I've spent a bit of time with one of these, courtesy of a coworker, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I can't argue with that. I just can't imagine slipping this in my pocket to listen to music while I mow the lawn, to pick one example. It's just too big to be a daily driver. I guess I'll be sticking with my iPhone 5 for the foreseeable future.joe_dude - Tuesday, September 30, 2014 - link
Joshua, you guys really need to investigate bendgate before recommending it. Is it a real issue?? The CR test is the same one used by Apple that failed to find the problem. The Unbox Therapy video showed the 6+ was bent with minimal force at the weak spot. Heck, 10 year old kids could bend it. Anand is gone, but we still come here for a thorough review.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ3Ds6uf0Yg