I love Apple.
Two weeks ago I received two iPhone 6s. I chose the 128Gb model, and Natasha ordered the 64Gb version. Danya was left out in the cold. He still has to call some Nyonya on Nokia.
We both chose “space gray” phones. We wanted black phones, like before. But Tim Cook consulted with Jony Ive about this and they decided that it was impossible. We choose from “like gold” (read “dirty yellow”), white or “space gray”. Where in space they found the gray color remains a mystery to me. Black no longer exists. Jony said no! Well, no, so no, I love Apple.
They say that Thailand was initially in the first wave of iPhone 6 sales. But some Thai minister started babbling on Twitter that Apple licensed two iPhone 6s from them long before they started selling. I even remember that moment. It was being discussed as another rumor. So, Apple seems to have decided to punish Thailand for this and did not include it in either the first or second wave of sales.
Therefore, if you are a fan of Apple products, then you should either agree and wait for manna from heaven, or independently look for ways to make yourself happy. I was pretty tired of waiting for the phones to appear here and a month after the presentation I decided to order phones through intermediaries. The so-called “gray” phones. I was especially pleased that the people I completely and utterly trust were the ones who contacted the intermediaries.
The prices were announced to me as follows:
iPhone 6 128Gb - $1185 (38,000 baht). Delivery via Bangkok from Singapore.
iPhone 6 64Gb - $1090 (35,000 baht). Delivery via Bangkok from Hong Kong.
The only difference is the sockets. Great news. I don’t know the initial prices and of course the final price is higher than the store price. But this is natural, considering the route they take. I was actually thinking about flying to Singapore and buying them myself. The tickets were $300.
The hotel, taxi and visa issues were another $250. So, the phones would have cost me $550 more + I didn’t want to fly anywhere. I even looked for someone to pay for the flight so that he would bring them. But I couldn’t find anyone in time.
So, I paid the specified amount and waited impatiently, fidgeting in my chair and reading reviews for almost a week. They called me... They brought them!
White boxes. There is no picture on the top of the box. Only a bas-relief mold of the iPhone, slightly rising above the surface of the box. Either this is a hint that we are all blind if we buy this, or has Apple become focused on blind buyers who are more accustomed to the relief Braille font? It looks strange and somehow unfinished. You hold the box in your hands and are not entirely sure that it contains exactly what you are buying. As an inveterate visual person, I clearly lacked a normal picture for complete happiness.
First impressions
The first impressions are unusual and ambiguous.
The case
Unusually thin and smooth. The case is a single, cast piece. It fits in the hand just as well.
I skipped the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S models because I didn't see anything that would make me buy these models, saying goodbye to my current phone. Which worked properly, supporting all the functions of the current firmware, flying through all the programs.
Therefore, after my iPhone 4S, the case of the new iPhone 6 seemed surrealistically thin, being on the verge of a foul. Based on the experience of two weeks of use, I can say that I have already caught the phone more than once on its suicidal attempts to slip out of my hand. The case is as slippery to the touch as it is pleasant. This is interconnected.
It is flat, thin and round. There are no edges. There is nothing for the hand to catch on. In general, the iPhone 6 case is somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone 2G. Only flatter and thinner. It is cast, like a piece of precious stone. Well, ok, semi-precious, no less. After all, this is Apple. )
About the thinness. Apple advertises the number 6.9 mm everywhere. In reality, if you measure it, you will get not 6.9 but 6.97 mm. But who counts the second digit after the decimal point in a millimeter? However, in practice it is more likely not 6.9 but 7.0.
And this is despite the fact that, for example, OPPO, which is so loved in the East, has a flagship model thickness of 5.9 mm. And on October 28, they presented a model with a thickness of 4.85 mm. And if you think that this is Chinese consumer goods, then I have to disappoint you. I used their phones. Excellent screen, Russian menu, camera that shoots RAW files of 56Mb. I played with these photos in Photoshop.
They are excellent! They are flexible. I understand that the files are most likely interpolated. However, there is enough real information to pull them into PS as files from an excellent point-and-shoot camera. My paradigm has collapsed. Where am I and where are Chinese products. However, Chinese products are already here. I tell you, the future belongs to the Chinese! And it is not as far away as it seems to us.
For example, what does a 55-inch 4K TV from the same company cost? For $850. I have a Samsung with a resolution of 1920×1080 for $3000 with all sorts of 3D, Smart, etc. (there is even a remote control!). But I would change it without looking back for a Chinese something called OPPO and leave a couple of thousand dollars in my wallet.
But the Chinese have Xiaomi. Which copies Apple not just like that, but does it very well, and in all areas - in hardware and software. Adding its own. Moreover, necessary and correct. The products of this company are really high-quality and in demand, which is not surprising. With comparable characteristics, they cost at least half as much as Apple. Even Jony Ive once expressed his indignation at Xiaomi. Well done, what else can you say. Would I buy Xiaomi? No.
The connected ecosystem and quality guarantees are more important to me than the money saved. But, this is far from the first place for everyone. Or rather, the majority are, which means Xiaomi will appeal to this majority. Let's return to the American product iPhone, manufactured at the Chinese Foxconn plant. By the way, Canon products are manufactured at Foxconn plants.
I mentioned the thin case, rounded edges, and here are the plastic stripes. This is the delirium of a perfectionist. A stupid touch by a novice Chinese designer named Jonathan Ive. To create a perfect case and dilute it with plastic stripes. Crazy! In the white version, they are also painted from jeans. Of course, more in the corners.
That is, you have a white phone with gradient blue stripes. Brilliant! Bravo Ive, bravo! From my two-week experience, I can say that you don’t get used to them, you just agree with them. They are clearly out of place on the phone case. And one more thing. If you look closely, you will see that the stripes on the case have their own subtle relief.
Case size. Something unusual for someone who has had an iPhone since the day it was born. Or rather, since the day of the first software unlock. This is unusual. It is actually big. Carrying it in your pockets is normal. If earlier I preferred to pull the phone out of my jeans when I sat down at the table, now before sitting down I always pull the phone out. Does it bend? I tried - no, it does not.
I have not sat on it (yet), but I could not bend it with my hands without brutal effort. And it is unlikely that I will need more in life. So, the phone has every chance of living to see its successor. When you double-tap the Home button, the screen moves halfway down. And the same way back. This is if you do not reach the top with your crooked short finger. In practice, this function only gets in the way. Because I periodically touch the button without noticing and the screen moves down.
I have never had problems working on the phone with one hand before, and I do not have problems now. As before, in order not to reach the edge of the screen, it was always easier for me to poke with the finger of the other hand, so I do it now. Without even thinking about it. I do not know where the topic of the inconvenience of working with one hand came from, in my opinion it is not here. The same goes for the case bending stories.
By the way, I noticed that the Home button is now pressed more smoothly.
And again about China. The mobile operator Unicom offers its customers to "fit" pockets on their trousers when buying an iPhone 6 Plus. The company opened a sewing division specifically for this purpose, where tailors enlarge pockets on clothes or even sew on new ones. Clothing manufacturers are lagging behind technology.
And I also saw that they started selling trousers with special pockets for the iPhone 6 Plus. Making a marketing gimmick out of it. Trousers are the best case for the iPhone 6 Plus! It seems that Apple is indirectly giving work to the clothing industry. )
Screen
The brand new iPhone 6 is equipped with a 4.7-inch monitor with a resolution of 1334×750 pixels. With a super-buper oleophobic coating, which in two weeks of gentle use has already managed to get scratched in two places. Which was not noticed on either the iPhone 2G or the iPhone 4S. There were small scratches, but they accumulated over a couple of years.
And then, suddenly, here you go! It looks like I touched it with keys or sand in the car, in the cup holder where I often put my phone. Still, life on a tropical island makes itself felt. There is no dirt, but there is always a lot of sand in the car, no matter how much you clean it.
Let's get back to the phone. The resolution was increased proportionally to the diagonal growth, while maintaining the same pixel density per inch, and they loudly called it Retina HD.
The screen has high contrast and excellent viewing angles. The matrix type is IPS, with very high brightness (up to 527 cd / m2). Even in the tropical sun, the screen not only does not go blind, but is a worthy competitor to the star called the Sun. Excellent and, most importantly, natural color rendering, a real color gamut.
This is not Samsung with its acidic colors that are physically impossible to look at. Especially if your profession is a photographer and you are used to working with normal colors on normal monitors. If you took a photo and immediately want to throw it on social networks, but you are not satisfied with the picture, then you can quickly process it in the built-in editor and be sure that the color and light rendering correspond to reality. Of course, the question remains on what monitors people will look at your work of art, but that's another story.
Thanks to the increased screen size, it has become much more convenient to use the navigator, calendar, and of course the Internet. This is not yet an iPad Mini, but still, if you like to sit on the phone Internet when away from home, then this is just for you. It has become more convenient to type SMS, due to the increased icons on the screen.
And it has become a little easier to read (less strain on the eyes). Formally, there is no glove mode here, however, they say that the display responds to fingers in fairly thick gloves. It is not possible to check this in Thailand. And before, yes, in order not to take off gloves in the winter cold, you had to slide the slider with your nose and then talk on the phone. I think it looked funny from the outside. Conclusion: The screen has become noticeably better than in the iPhone 5 / 5S and especially in my old iPhone 4S.
Size also matters. Less convenient to carry, but more convenient to use. After using the iPhone 6, you pick up the iPhone 4S and it seems, as Natasha said, "kind of childish." Unfinished.
Camera
The camera protrudes above the case by a good millimeter. This is not as critical as they shouted at every corner. In reality, it is not as noticeable as it seems. The phone lies flat on the table and the camera does not interfere with typing. Unless you press the upper left edge of the phone. I really do type holding the phone in my hand, and usually in both hands, typing quickly with the thumbs of both hands. It is convenient. Apple threatened that the camera has a protective sapphire glass, which can only be scratched by the sapphire or diamond itself. I hope so. Because the phone lies and rubs against the table and other surfaces just with the camera lens. The camera is subject to the main point load.
It seems that Apple has again decided not to chase megapixels, leaving the same 8Mp in the iSight camera. The frame size is 3264 x 2448 pixels. Unlike the iPhone 6 Plus, the iPhone 6 does not have an optical image stabilization system, but it does have some “cinematic stabilization” when shooting video. WOW! I didn’t notice, but it stabilizes something somewhere. The maximum resolution when shooting video is 1920 × 1080 pixels, the recording speed is 30 or 60 frames per second. Sound is recorded in mono mode. For slow-motion video, the smartphone has the ability to shoot at 240 frames per second.
A wonderful function. I used it to shoot a lot of videos during a five-day trip to Krabi. I had a problem with this function. The video that I shot in high-speed mode is displayed very beautifully and in detail by the smartphone. You look at the screen and swoon at your own cameramanship. And when, upon arriving home, I dumped everything onto my laptop, I saw that all this detail remained where the genius was.
On the phone. It turned out that when recording in Slow Motion, the resolution drops to 1280×720 pixels and the light sensitivity noticeably decreases. Example below:
Video in low light conditions. The left screenshot is Slow Motion (1280×720). The right one is a normal video (1920×1080). The difference is visible to the naked eye. The left one is dark, with poor dynamic range, the right one is normal with much better dynamics. Actual image sizes on the monitor screen. The left one is small, the right one is full screen
I shot this video on an iPhone 4S (also, don't forget to set 720p).
And the phone has the ability to quickly edit with this special effect. For example, a car flies into the frame, slows down for a moment near you and flies away from the frame. Wow! Now you're a genius at editing! But again, all these editing effects remain in the phone. The entire Rapid video was downloaded to the laptop in slow motion from beginning to end. Perhaps it was necessary to somehow re-save in a new file, but it didn't even occur to me and the phone's processor needed to offer me this option. Perhaps there is no such re-saving option or I intuitively did not find it.
In addition to the increased shooting speed (slow playback), the camera now has a phase focusing system. I shot about 4,000 photos and videos. The camera really does everything itself and very quickly - you no longer need to "tap" to focus. Far from ideal, but incomparably better than the iPhone 5S and especially the iPhone 4S. In terms of quality, photos from the iPhone 6 are not much better than photos from the iPhone 5S. The difference is rather that it has become easier and faster to take a clear photo.
Plus a wonderful function for adjusting the exposure when shooting. It has saved me often. It is like spot metering in a camera. Without tapping your fingernail on some details in the frame, you can manually adjust the exposure as you like. Almost like the “Manual” in a professional camera.
Testing in the most difficult conditions. The left frame is forced exposure with spot metering on the foreground. The right frame is average-weighted metering, with automatic background extension. The dynamic range of the files is not very large.
If you took a photo and decided to seriously process it, then you will need considerable knowledge of Photoshop. Because there is not as much information in the frame as you would like. These are not Chinese phones with their rubber PAW.
This is what I got when trying to pull out a dark frame. With such photos we are not on the same path. It's time to learn to take pictures without Photoshop. :) However, if you still know how to take pictures at least a little, then the camera will show itself from the best side. The picture is flexible, the contrast is at a classic level, the color rendition is excellent.
The disadvantage is that the white balance wanders in two adjacent frames. In general, I liked the camera in the iPhone 6. Not the height of perfection, but just right for home photography. A few more shots from this camera, taken in slightly different conditions:
Room. Unidirectional light from the street lay plastically, without torn edges. Excellent skin tone. Excellent white balance. Good elaboration in the shadows. No knockouts.
Street. With a blue sky, both skin tone and white balance are good. Good gray dynamics.
Open space. Almost sunset on the beach of Krabi area in Thailand. Healthy skin tone. Good white balance, even though the frame is slightly yellowed by the yellowing sun. The camera did not lose WB and overall coloring.
Cross light and shadow. Pre-lunch sun. Excellent skin tone. Good white balance. All colors correspond to reality. Correct saturation. Good development of leaves in the shadows, they are not sunken. And the sand is not knocked out, as cameras do to stretch shadows. Classic contrast.
Macro taken on iPhone 6 with a Chinese lens attachment. These attachments are a terrible "G". However, if you frown slightly and move away from the monitor, then the $10 spent on these plastic things can be worth it. The price is quite consistent with the quality.)
Flash
The built-in flash is simply the height of technical perfection. Double. One flash has a light temperature of about 2800, the second 7500 Kelvin. If I were shown a photo and told that it was taken with the built-in phone flash, I would hardly believe it. Judge for yourself.
Dania is under a canopy. A big dip in light relative to the street. Shadow. I forced the flash to turn on and the camera used it as a fill flash, beautifully and very correctly aligned this frame.
No harsh glare, no harsh shadows with sharp transitions, wonderful white balance. Look at the sky, it is not broken through, there is information there. The camera correctly pulled out all the dark areas and at the same time did not knock out the light areas in the photo. At the same time, the shutter speed is quite short at 1/132 and ISO 32.
Which prevented the frame from blurring. Excellent! In general, you can't even see the use of a flash in the photo. Although it is there (see the photo below). This is the best praise for a fill flash.
That's it! I'm tired of writing. I'd like to tell you a lot more, but it's time to get down to business. What can I say in conclusion? In general, I liked the iPhone 6. Apple didn't make the breakthrough that everyone expects from it, but they don't really have to. The evolution of the market and the Apple company is taking its course. I hope we'll wait for something AH! In the meantime, let's use the best that the mobile technology market has to offer today. Enjoy life and create your own AH that you can be proud of!
I love Apple.
Have you read this article to the end and did you like it? Then I recommend reading about how I chose my camera. A big article about my big adventures: Canon vs. Nikon. A small experiment for $20,000.
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Sincerely, Eduard Stelmakh.
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