Ran a half marathon tonight - and used the opportunity to try out the iPhone 6 Plus low-light photography capabilities. Well, I must say, its damn impressive. I only had my Galaxy S4 (Samsungs 2013 flagship model) to compare it against, so not entirely fair, but nonetheless, the difference is night and day (well, night and night) and shows how fast technology is progressing. The iPhone 6 Plus Optical Image Stabilisation works wonders - all of these photos were taken handheld, and you can see how much sharper the iPhone images are. It seems to deal with high contract situations a lot better too. The 240fps slow motion feature is fun:-) Other than the camera, overall after 16 hours with it, Im liking the 6 Plus a lot. Ive got long-ish fingers so can use it single-handedly, although typing is awkward like that and I cant grip it tight when I do (its more a case of resting it on my palm). Having said that, using the SwiftKey keyboard (with which you dont need to take your finger off the keyboard, you just swipe over it in the direction of the letters you want to use) single handed typing isnt that hard. Still, two-handed use is a lot more comfortable. The battery is huge and power management is very impressive. About halfway through tonights run I had to change the (not very old) 2600mAh battery in my Samsung, and the second battery was down to just 30% by the time I finished the run. I was using the iPhone in a similar way (mapping, GPS tracking); even with its bigger screen to power, the 2915mAh battery still had 40% remaining at the end of the run. Needless to say it also takes a long time to charge... The main thing Ill be using it for is media consumption (Kindle books, news etc), and the bigger screen will be a welcome relief. I find the iPad mini too big to comfortably hold for long periods, and the iPhone 5S left me squinting a lot of the time. An interesting side effect of getting the iPhone 6 Plus is that I now feel more tolerant towards my Galaxy S4. Until now its been this big lump of plastic with an operating system that has a habit of flashing up messages saying Unfortunately X app has stopped working and generally just not doing what I want it to do, but now its this kind of cute dumpy relic from the past that I feel a bit sorry for, and cant bring myself to get pissed with it. Ill continue to use it as a pocket wifi and for NFC payments, which I absolutely love. Well see how things go over the coming week as I attempt to use the iPhone 6 when out and about to get stuff done.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 15:27:15 +0000