Although it is primarily a review of the model Verizon Wireless, the iPhone 6 Plus is available from all the major carriers in a bewildering range of prices. For example, Verizon pricing starts at $ 299 with a two-year contract, while T-Mobile is offering the phone for free up front, but $ 31.24 / month. Is the phone in 16GB, 64GB and 128GB sizes, and they are generally as much as $ 100 more than the standard iPhone 6 units.
As a prominent supporter Apple John Gruber, come to this review with a bias: I find the large unwieldy and impractical phones. The iPhone 6 Plus is a full two-hand device, if only to be able to flip it out of your hands and fall to the ground while it is fidgeting around in it with one hand, trying to reach the left corner of the keyboard or press the shutter button of the camera.
That is true for all of the giant phone, of course. Samsung thinking more clearly, and longer, about why you might want a giant phone and how to mitigate its elephantiasis. Samsung one-handed mode, for example, moving the UI not only down but also on the side, placing the left hand corner within reach of your thumb.
LG and Samsung phablets which tend to revolve around multitasking and note-taking, phablet differentiator Apple dual-paned apps. Apple hint in your first few minutes of using the iPhone 6 Plus you should try rotating it to landscape mode, for the first time, the home screen rearranges itself horizontally. It was a nudge to make you look at apps in orientation as well. When you open the calendar, for example, it blooms wider, giving you an overall view of months left and a right agenda, just like you are in a grownup tablet. Messages and weather apps are dual-paned well. Very few third-party apps have dual-pane mode yet, though: CNN and OpenTable can mention only two Apple.
The iPhone 6 Plus is made of beautiful matte metal, like the iPhone 6. The fake-leather back with Galaxy Note series is actually better at this size: It is really grippy, giving you confidence that the big phone is not going to slip out of your hands. I've had slightly less confident in iPhone 6 Plus. While all-metal body 6 Plus feel significantly more premium than the Galaxy Note does, it is a little slipperier, and I'm afraid I'm going to break the screen when I drop it. Get a case.
The battery 2,915mAh iPhone 6 Plus is much larger than the battery 1,810mAh 6, but it did not make much of a difference to our toughest test battery, that streams video over LTE YouTube. I have 4 hours, 43 minutes of stable stream 6 Plus vs. 4 hours, 33 minutes got 6 Samsung Galaxy Note 3 5 hours, 46 minutes.
The culprit, of course, is the gigantic screen. If you do not turn on the screen a lot, I suspect you're going to get longer battery life from the iPhone 6 Plus than from 6 (although once again, the Samsung device will be more longer than that). Background processes such as check in the mail will get the same amount of power to run both 6 and 6 Plus, so the larger battery 6 Plus will actually win out.