The iPhone reinvented

In the re­cent pre­sen­ta­tion of the new range of iPhones, Apple ex­ec­u­tive Tim Cook stated that the new smart­phones rep­re­sented the “biggest ad­vance­ments in iPhone his­tory”. Be­yond the mar­ket­ing rhetoric, it does seem true that the pop­u­lar brand of phones has un­der­gone the most rad­i­cal im­prove­ments since the orig­i­nal model ap­peared in 2007.

The first thing one no­tices about the new phones is that they are big­ger. The new range that in­cludes the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus is now in shops and pro­duc­ing great ex­cite­ment among Apple fans, as seen from the queues that have formed out­side Apple stores. In fact, so great was the ex­pec­ta­tion that in the first 24 hours of the reser­va­tion pe­riod for the new phones, in the US alone, a record four mil­lion or­ders were placed.

With 4.7 and 5.5 inch mod­els, Apple has fi­nally caught up with its com­peti­tors. After Sam­sung pi­o­neered large-screen phones, Apple at first showed lit­tle in­ter­est be­fore the de­mands of the mar­ket forced it to change tack. De­spite the larger for­mat, the iPhone is slim­mer and the qual­ity of the ma­te­ri­als re­mains high. With the launch, Apple now has four mod­els on the mar­ket, as the 5S and 5C con­tin­ued to be sold at a lower price.

An­other nov­elty is also some­thing that An­droid com­peti­tors al­ready offer, the in­clu­sion of NFC tech­nol­ogy, which al­lows the in­stant trans­fer of data be­tween phones. How­ever, Apple has re­stricted the use of NFC to pay­ing for items with­out the need of bank cards. This con­ve­nient form of pay­ment, called Apple Pay, is avail­able in the US this month, with plans to ex­tend it to other mar­kets soon.

Apple's de­trac­tors have crit­i­cised the new phones, ar­gu­ing that the nov­el­ties have al­ready been avail­able for some time on An­droid phones. How­ever, this ar­gu­ment ig­nores other as­pects that make the new iPhones unique, such as the sec­ond gen­er­a­tion 64-bit proces­sor that has higher per­for­mance while con­sum­ing less power, and the par­al­lel proces­sor that man­ages move­ment through an ac­celerom­e­ter, gy­ro­scope, com­pass and barom­e­ter. The data col­lected (the num­ber of kilo­me­tres trav­elled or the steps climbed) is pre­sented in the new Health ap­pli­ca­tion that comes in­cluded with the IOS 8 op­er­at­ing sys­tem.

As for the cam­era, Apple has not fol­lowed the trend in rais­ing the num­ber of megapix­els (top range An­doid phones offer cam­eras with up to 20 megapix­els) and con­tin­ues with the 8 megapix­els of the pre­vi­ous range. Nev­er­the­less, cam­era per­for­mance has im­proved, with the ca­pac­ity for quick focus. Also, the iPhone 6 Plus has an op­ti­cal image sta­biliser to im­prove the qual­ity of pho­tos taken in spaces with low light­ing con­di­tions. Among other im­prove­ments are im­proved video cap­ture, higher audio qual­ity for phone calls and the 6 Plus ver­sion can be used hor­i­zon­tally, just like the iPad.

Prices for the 6 Plus begin at 799 euros for the 16GB ver­sion, though many cus­tomers will be tempted by the 128GB ver­sion for 999 euros. The iPhone 6 is avail­able in 16GB, 64GB and 128GB ver­sions at prices of be­tween 699 and 899 euros.