Technology

The One-Paragraph iPhone 6 Review

A time-saving summary of today's many, many, many evaluations of the new gadgets

By Robinson Meyer
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Late Tuesday night, the first reviews of Apple’s new smartphones were published. Though the reviews come from a wide swath of writers—everyone from the Gray Lady to an elite Apple blogger to Stephen Fry has had their say—they all seem to amount to the same rough consensus. So in case you don’t have time to read the megabytes of criticism which have been published, here are the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus reviewed, each in one paragraph.

We’ve skipped stats here, but there are really only two important ones:

  • The iPhone 6 starts at $199 with contract and has a 4.7-inch screen.
  • The 6 Plus starts at $299 and has a 5.5-inch screen, nearly as large as an iPad Mini.  

Without further ado:

The iPhone 6 Reviewed, in One Paragraph:

The iPhone 6 feels like the perfect phone in my hand. The new Retina HD display … seems brighter and more vivid to my eye. The iPhone 6 is the new king of phone photos, thanks to some modest camera improvements, particularly for dark situations and squirmy subjects like pets. ​There’s a new chip inside that Apple says is 25 percent faster. You wouldn’t notice it without testing the old and new phones side by side. I’m sorry to report that even a big iPhone 6 doesn’t deliver an all-day charge if you’re a heavy user or in an area without strong wireless signals. The most amazing thing about the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is how utterly un-amazing it now seems to see Apple pull off this level of year-over-year improvement year after year after year. Everything is better and nothing is different.

The iPhone 6 Plus Reviewed, in One Paragraph (and One Extra Sentence):

Design is about trade-offs. The iPhone 6 Plus is a behemoth. It didn’t fit well in pockets. Unless your thumb has an extra joint or two, it won’t reach the the most distant territory on the screen. There are some huge advantages to having a huge phone. Both models are much better for reading ebooks, answering email, watching movies, surfing the Web, and so on. The other thing I really enjoyed with the iPhone 6 Plus is using the larger screen when taking pictures. If you're having trouble choosing between the 6 and its extra-large twin, battery life may be the ultimate deciding factor. In my tests, which involved setting the display brightness to 50 percent and cycling through my regular routine of apps and phone calls, the iPhone 6 Plus would last from early one morning until evening the following day. I found the iPhone 6 Plus too large and unwieldy to use as my daily driver.

Oh yes, both new phones also make calls.

And here are the reviews from which we amalgamated, in order the order of appearance. For the iPhone 6 review:

And for the iPhone 6 Plus review:

We thank our unwitting participants for their reviews and cooperation.

Robinson Meyer is a former staff writer at The Atlantic and the former author of the newsletter The Weekly Planet.