Review Apple iPhone 6 Plus

Now that everyone from Alcatel to ZTE has discovered that people are trying to replace phones and tablets with single hybrid devices, Apple has grudgingly decided to step into the space with the $299-and-up iPhone 6 Plus. The result is a very big iPhone that will satisfy people who want a very big iPhone, but which doesn't necessarily add to the conversation.

Although this is primarily a review of the Verizon Wireless model, the iPhone 6 Plus is available from all the major carriers at a bewildering range of prices. For instance, Verizon's prices start at $299 with a two-year contract, while T-Mobile offers phones for free up front, but $31.24/month. The phone comes in 16GB, 64GB and 128GB sizes, and they're generally all $100 more than the standard iPhone 6 units.

Physical Features and Battery Life
The 6 Plus is bigger and heavier than some of its phablet competition. At 6.22 by 3.06 by 0.28 inches (HWD) and 6.07 ounces, it's longer and wider than the LG G3, longer but narrower than the Samsung Galaxy Note 3$99.99 at Amazon and Note 4, and heavier than all three of them. Focusing on narrowness rather than shortness was the right choice, though: What makes phablets unwieldy is not how long they are, but how wide.

Like prominent Apple advocate John Gruber, I come to this review with a bias: I find these huge phones unwieldy and impractical. The iPhone 6 Plus is absolutely a two-handed device, if only that it might flip out of your hand and fall to the ground while you're fidgeting around on it with one hand, trying to reach the left edge of the keyboard or hit the camera shutter button.

That's true for all of these giant phones, of course. Samsung has just been thinking more clearly, and longer, about why you might want a giant phone and how to mitigate its elephantiasis. Samsung's one-handed mode, for instance, moves the UI not just down but also to the side, putting the left edge within reach of your thumb.

Where LG and Samsung's phablets tend to revolve around multitasking and note-taking, Apple's phablet differentiator is dual-paned apps. Apple hints within your first few minutes of using the iPhone 6 Plus that you should try rotating it into landscape mode—for the first time, the home screen rearranges itself horizontally.

That's a nudge to make you look at apps in that orientation as well. When you open the calendar, for instance, it blooms wider, giving you an overall month view on the left and an agenda on the right, just like you're on a grownup tablet. The messages and weather apps are also dual-paned. Very few third-party apps have a dual-pane mode yet, though: CNN and OpenTable were the only two Apple could cite.

The iPhone 6 Plus is made of beautiful matte metal, just like the iPhone 6 is. The faux-leather back on the Galaxy Note series is actually better at this size: It's really grippy, giving you confidence that the big phone isn't going to slip out of your hand. I had slightly less confidence with the iPhone 6 Plus. While the 6 Plus's all-metal body feels significantly more premium than the Galaxy Note does, it's a little slipperier, and I fear I'm going to break the screen when I drop it. Get a case.

The 2,915mAh battery in the iPhone 6 Plus is much bigger than the 1,810mAh battery in the 6, but it didn't make that much of a difference in our toughest battery test, which streams a video on LTE over YouTube. I got 4 hours, 43 minutes of solid streaming on the 6 Plus as compared with 4 hours, 33 minutes on the 6. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 got 5 hours, 46 minutes.

The culprit, of course, is the gigantic screen. If you don't turn on the screen a lot, I suspect you're going to get much longer battery life from the iPhone 6 Plus than from the 6 (although once again, the Samsung device may be yet longer than that). Background processes like checking the mail will take the same amount of power to run on both the 6 and the 6 Plus, so the 6 Plus's bigger battery will really win out.

-pcmag