Big-screened iPhones are what the people want, and Apple has acquiesced. After months of part leaks and rumors, you can finally buy the newer, bigger, faster iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and it looks like plenty of people are doing so.

 

Any review of the new phones needs to spend an extensive amount of time with these screens, since they're the headlining feature and the one that the most people will notice. We're going to spend a lot of time with them, too, but there's a lot more going on here than just big displays—Apple has upgraded the phones' cameras, expanded their batteries, and replaced last year's 64-bit A7 chip with the brand-new A8. iOS 8, a large release even if you're not upgrading your phone this year, has picked up some features (and some challenges) unique to these new phones.

Buckle up, because we've gotten our hands on the new phones, and we've been torture-testing them during every waking moment since. Wondering what the iPhone 6 Plus' optical image stabilization does for your pictures? Want to know more about the Apple A8 and which of Apple's promises about the chip stand up to scrutiny (hint: not all of them)? Need to know what your apps are going to look like and how they're going to work in this brave new big screen world? Read on, because we've got all that and more.

What's different?

Since this is a two-fer review, let’s start by outlining the difference between both the new devices. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are like the Retina iPad Mini and the iPad Air, or like the 11- and 13-inch MacBook Airs. They’ve got mostly the same insides and design touches, with a handful of differences. Many things in this review will apply to both phones; when they don’t, we’ll be sure to specify which one we’re referencing.

Here’s a list of the major differences between the 6 and the 6 Plus, aside from their physical dimensions:

• Screen size: iPhone 6 is 4.7 inches and 1334×750, iPhone 6 Plus is 5.5 inches and 1920×1080.
• Battery: iPhone 6 is 1810mAh, iPhone 6 Plus is 2915mAh.
• Camera: The iPhone 6 Plus adds optical image stabilization (OIS) to the same camera the iPhone 6 uses.
• Software: The iPhone 6 Plus’ larger screen lets it do a few things the iPhone 6 can’t, though not without caveats.

Look and feel

Since the first iPhone 6 part leaks began, I’ve thought of the new design as the child of an iPhone 5 and an HTC One. Both of those phones share a mostly metal chassis with strips sliced out of it to let wireless signals through. But the iPhones retain distinctly Apple-esque design touches—symmetrical front bezels with the TouchID-equipped Home button, solid and creak-free construction, and an obsession-to-a-fault with thinness.

In most respects, both new iPhones are worthy of their predecessors. Apple’s build quality is characteristically excellent, and neither phone exhibits even a hint of creaking, flexing, or button-wobbling. The nicest change is that the hard edges of the iPhone 4- and 5-era designs have been expelled in favor of rounded edges that run all the way around the back of the phone. They blend (nearly) seamlessly with the gently curved glass on the front of the phone, making the whole thing comfortable to hold.

Though it’s larger and more curvy, the rest of the design should be pretty familiar if you’ve ever seen an iPhone. The Home button, still ringed by the TouchID fingerprint sensor, remains a mainstay, and this year’s version feels and sounds more rigid and clicky than the version in our 5S. The long rectangular volume buttons on the left edge of the phone under the mute switch resemble those used by the iPhone 5C or iPads rather than the round buttons of the iPhone 4 or 5. The power button has moved to the right edge of the phone, as with many larger Android phones; with devices this big, this placement is easier to hit with one hand than a button on top of the phone might be. The nano SIM tray still sits on the right edge of the phone.

The iPhone 6 design isn’t really doing a whole lot that’s new, not if you're paying attention to what any of the high-end Android and Windows phone hardware makers have been doing. But Apple takes many individual things that have been done well in other phones—those rounded edges, the curved glass, the larger, higher-resolution displays—and combines them all into one nicely assembled package. We only have two complaints about the new design, compared both to iPhones of past years and to the Android-based competition. And both, I suspect, stem from the aforementioned obsession with thinness.

The first complaint is that, compared to most recent Android handsets, the new iPhones don’t have a particularly good screen-to-bezel ratio. This is due in part to the TouchID button, a genuinely useful feature for which we’d gladly trade a smaller bezel. But especially in the iPhone 6 Plus, there’s plenty of extra bezel around the Touch ID button that feels like it could have been condensed, and Apple’s love of symmetry means any space shaved off of the bottom bezel could automatically be removed from the top bezel as well.