24 hours with the iPhone 6 and 6 plus

Day one

Both of the phones arrive and I instantly gravitate towards the iPhone 6 over the 6 Plus.

The phone I’m replacing is a (much-loved) Sony Z2, which size-wise is somewhere between the two new iPhones. Through the illusion of distant comparison the iPhone 6 feels tiny, despite being larger than the iPhone 5S and 5C.

Both phones feel thin and light, which surprises me. I’ve just been reading reports about the infamous bending and it does feel like these phones are more delicate than others I’ve used. Though again, this could be illusory due to their lightness.

Setting them up is still painful. Unlike Android phones, iPhones require a SIM card to set up, meaning you can’t leave your SIM in your old phone while your new one goes through all the set-up procedures.

If you’re like me you have your iPhone (and iPad) backing up to iCloud, but you also take lots of photos and forget to delete them. This means restoring a new iPhone from your previous iCloud back-up can take upwards of 45 minutes. Then there’s the passwords for applications like Gmail. iCloud can remember these as well if you use Keychain or another application like 1Password. If you don’t (and I don’t) and you use 2-factor authentication for many things (and I do), set-up is a long and painful process.

Back to the phone itself. The headphone jack, microphone and speaker are all still on the bottom. The camera now juts out about a millimetre from the body. This is because the rest of the body got slimmer but for the camera to work properly it needs to be a certain depth, and that depth is just slightly greater than the length of the phone.

Apple assures me that the lens will not scratch. “Take sandpaper to it all day and you won’t scratch that sapphire lens.” This guarantee does not extend to the aluminium body.

The body of the iPhone 6 I have is gold, while the 6 Plus is silver and both have white front faces. I mention this for only one reason - the white faces look awful. The build quality of Apple products has always been incredibly high and something they pride themselves on. The front of the phone has curved glass near the edge where it meets the curved edge of the aluminium body. This makes for a relatively seamless transition between the two materials, however the white plastic under the curved glass makes the phone look cheap and nasty.

Both the 6 and the Plus have a feature where double tapping (not “clicking”) the home button moves the whole of the screen down to about half way, allowing for ease of access with a single thumb. This is sometimes helpful, but right now is something I keep forgetting to use.

After the first day I have been using the iPhone 6 a lot more than the Plus (and the 6 is the one with my SIM in it for now). I haven’t had much of an issue with the bigger size as I’m used to a large-screened Android phone. However the thinness has taken some getting used to. Most importantly, the 6 fits into my pocket easily while the Plus doesn’t.

This is all after one day of use. I haven’t played around with the camera much yet.

You can see what Hadyn found after 2 weeks with the phones here.

About the author:

Hadyn Green is a geek. He loves shiny new tech and the chance to try to break it. Because it's the kind of thing people ask, here is the tech Hadyn currently uses. Phone: Sony Z2 Tablet: iPad mini retina. Music player: Spotify. Headphones: Sony MDR-G55 (for walking because I hate earbuds) and Beats Studio noise-cancelling (for sitting at my desk and tuning out the world). E-Reader: Kindle Touch. Gaming: PS4, PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360. Internet Service Provider: Snap.