The Ultimate iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review we have been waiting for : AnandTech Review

[koigirl]

This was a very interesting piece from the review, taken from the software section. For those of you concerned about the lack of RAM and how Safari is handled on an iPhone 6.

The other issue has the potential to be far more serious. While iOS' software architecture is more RAM efficient due to manual garbage collection and the use of precompiled binaries, it's quite easy for me to push the phone past the breaking point in Safari. For example, six tabs of common websites for mobile devices cannot consistently be held in memory. If I continuously go through all six tabs, at least one will need to reload. In my first attempt at running this test, Safari crashed as I tried to go through all tabs constantly to keep them in memory. I didn't notice this behavior in the new Moto X, which can do the same test without issue. Outside of memory intensive use cases though, the iPhone 6 does respectably and I usually don't notice the lack of RAM. I have to emphasize that this should be a generally unlikely problem, and that the same behavior can be replicated on the iPhone 5s given the same workload. If you did not have issues with out of memory crashes before, there won't be any issues now.

Yes, he mentions it, I guess for comprehensiveness sake, but then completely glosses over the negative effects of paltry 1GB RAM on performance and user experience. Safari performance is a joke and I say that as an Apple enthusiast. Chrome is what I have switched to on iPad Air and 6 Plus and it is better but reloading and crashing issues still exist due to inadequate level of RAM. Makes you wonder if they're all fishing for Apple jobs like the one Anand bailed for.

 

[Bahroo]

Awesome, finally

 

[Bobo03]

Yes, he mentions it, I guess for comprehensiveness sake, but then completely glosses over the negative effects of paltry 1GB RAM on performance and user experience. Safari performance is a joke and I say that as an Apple enthusiast. Chrome is what I have switched to on iPad Air and 6 Plus and it is better but reloading and crashing issues still exist due to inadequate level of RAM. Makes you wonder if they're all fishing for Apple jobs like the one Anand bailed for.

I think that the 6 plus will start to show it's holes when iOS 9 is released.

I don't feel that Apple is to concerned with longevity with the 6 and 6 plus.

 

[Imory]

Yes, he mentions it, I guess for comprehensiveness sake, but then completely glosses over the negative effects of paltry 1GB RAM on performance and user experience. Safari performance is a joke and I say that as an Apple enthusiast. Chrome is what I have switched to on iPad Air and 6 Plus and it is better but reloading and crashing issues still exist due to inadequate level of RAM. Makes you wonder if they're all fishing for Apple jobs like the one Anand bailed for.

I do believe they have better integrity than that.

However, it does make you wonder why they would cripple it like that when the rest of the hardware is state of the art (for the time being)? The CPU, GPU, NAND, screen (one could argue the resolution) are all top of the line which should last for quite some considerable time.

 

[KPOM]

It's good to see that the quality of the reviews hasn't declined now that Anand has moved on. Also, now that the main reviewer is an Android user, it's a little more difficult to say the review is biased (though people will still point to Anand's Apple connections, even though he's no longer involved with the editorial content of the site).

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I do believe they have better integrity than that.

However, it does make you wonder why they would cripple it like that when the rest of the hardware is state of the art (for the time being)? The CPU, GPU, NAND, screen (one could argue the resolution) are all top of the line which should last for quite some considerable time.

Planned obsolescence is the most likely explanation. I thought they'd go up to 2GB this year, but evidently they need something for the 6S.

 

[koigirl]

I also wish they'd made more effort for a thoroughly comprehensive review of the Plus. It's kind of an afterthought article.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Hmmm I usually like Anand's reviews but it seems like the reviewer wasn't particularly interested in reviewing the product.

 

[Jimmy James]

This was a very interesting piece from the review, taken from the software section. For those of you concerned about the lack of RAM and how Safari is handled on an iPhone 6.

The other issue has the potential to be far more serious. While iOS' software architecture is more RAM efficient due to manual garbage collection and the use of precompiled binaries, it's quite easy for me to push the phone past the breaking point in Safari. For example, six tabs of common websites for mobile devices cannot consistently be held in memory. If I continuously go through all six tabs, at least one will need to reload. In my first attempt at running this test, Safari crashed as I tried to go through all tabs constantly to keep them in memory. I didn't notice this behavior in the new Moto X, which can do the same test without issue. Outside of memory intensive use cases though, the iPhone 6 does respectably and I usually don't notice the lack of RAM. I have to emphasize that this should be a generally unlikely problem, and that the same behavior can be replicated on the iPhone 5s given the same workload. If you did not have issues with out of memory crashes before, there won't be any issues now.

This is a great excerpt. Users often cite OS optimization as a justification for 1GB ram. Optimized for 5 tabs is pretty poor, let alone what that tab number drops to should you access another app and return to surfing.

 

[Imory]

It's good to see that the quality of the reviews hasn't declined now that Anand has moved on. Also, now that the main reviewer is an Android user, it's a little more difficult to say the review is biased (though people will still point to Anand's Apple connections, even though he's no longer involved with the editorial content of the site).

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Planned obsolescence is the most likely explanation. I thought they'd go up to 2GB this year, but evidently they need something for the 6S.

Probably. A lack of RAM though will be more of an annoyance of not being able to multitask, instead of experiencing continuous lag. However, seeing as the 5S suffers from shoddy optimization thanks to iOS 8, where the weather app still lags...who knows. There's absolutely no reason the 5S should lag at all, given how powerful it is and how close it is in performance with the A8.

 

[kerrikins]

Wow @ some of these comments. Did I stumble into /r/Android, where unless the phone is trashed by the reviewer, it's garbage and biased?

I thought it was a great review, pretty balanced with all things considered.

 

[Bahroo]

Probably. A lack of RAM though will be more of an annoyance of not being able to multitask, instead of experiencing continuous lag. However, seeing as the 5S suffers from shoddy optimization thanks to iOS 8, where the weather app still lags...who knows. There's absolutely no reason the 5S should lag at all, given how powerful it is and how close it is in performance with the A8.

My 5S on iOS 8 is buttery smooth? Something is wrong with your 5S?

 

[vgamedude]

"While the design of iOS 8 itself is generally well-implemented, the user experience ends up a bit more mixed, and the result comes from the confluence of hardware and software. In the case of the iPhone 6, these issues effectively boil down to RAM"

"boil down to RAM"

Well well well....

Queue the apologists who constantly argue with me and say that safari reloading and the like is a software issue. Anand says cycling through only 6 tabs yields reloads and even crashes.

 

[Imory]

My 5S on iOS 8 is buttery smooth? Something is wrong with your 5S?

I don't think so, given that two of my 5S's suffer from it. Not to mention that a third one seems to have it as well. I posted this in another thread and the problem seems widespread.

Do any of you experience any lag in the stock weather app? As soon as I scroll out to see all cities and then pick one to get a full view, it lags. Really surprised this managed to pass, seeing as how incredibly powerful the A7 is. I have two 5S's and they both suffer from this.

Do you experience any frame drops when you do that?

 

[garycoleman2]

Almost sounds like it was written by an Apple employee...

I think some people don't understand this joke. In case anyone doesn't understand, Anand works for Apple now.

 

[Bahroo]

I don't think so, given that two of my 5S's suffer from it. Not to mention that a third one seems to have it as well. I posted this in another thread and the problem seems widespread.



Do you experience any frame drops when you do that?

No it defitnetly isnt widespread and my brothers 5S on iOS 8.0.2 is buttery smooth aswell too, besides maybe in safari a litttttle lag when you type in that new search bar where it gives more results, but other then that its been buttery smooth

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I think some people don't understand this joke. In case anyone doesn't understand, Anand works for Apple now.

Anand also didnt write the article and Anandtech's track history is extremely widely known to be reputable, unbiased, and better then most.

 

[Imory]

No it defitnetly isnt widespread and my brothers 5S on iOS 8.0.2 is buttery smooth aswell too, besides maybe in safari a litttttle lag when you type in that new search bar where it gives more results, but other then that its been buttery smooth

To be fair, none of us knows if it's widespread, but others on the forums have complained. It's definitely strange though. Perhaps I should start a thread and see how many suffer from it.

Hmm, yeah I don't experience any lag besides the weather app. Peculiar.

 

[TRC-WA]

Single-stream 802.11n is a slimmed-down version of the 802.11n wireless local area network (WLAN) specification.

The only reason I got the 6+ was because my MB Air was the only device taking advantage of my 802.11ac ATC.

 

[Bahroo]

To be fair, none of us knows if it's widespread, but others on the forums have complained. It's definitely strange though. Perhaps I should start a thread and see how many suffer from it.

Hmm, yeah I don't experience any lag besides the weather app. Peculiar.

The 6 is virtually unbendable in real life use(according to UnboxTherapys bend test of the 6 standing very strong and durable)

The 6 Plus may be a little more "bend prone"

I actually stopped by the Apple store, and I wasnt bending the Plus at all, I was giving it a little "bend force" just slightly a little pressure on the device to see if anything occurs, it feels rock solid and pretty tough, although I think i can see that this may be a issue down the road with the Plus as it doesnt take THAT much force to get it even slightly bent

No i wasnt bending the Plus at a Apple store, I was just giving it a little force a little push to see if it is "that easy " or if it will flex even a tiny bit, didnt budge, although I can see a little more pressure applied for longer bending the Plus everrrr so slightly, very small bend but there, who knows if this will add up over time, I highly doubt something like this blows past Apple's QC and that the Plus truly does have a flaw in normal usage , they would of found this out long time ago in testing of the device before it came out, it just seems almost impossible, like they say though, nothing is impossible. It would be beyond a epic failure of Apple if this is truly the case

 

[Gincoma]

Where do you ifans come from? Does Apple pay you for your comments?

Vag sore today bud?

 

[iBought]

You clearly dont understand what I was talking about. It's one thing to give a company credit where it's due, but it's something else entirely to say that the phone is the best just by looking at a test. You say that iPhone 6 is the best smartphone all around, yet you forget that Lumia 1520 has a better screen, better camera, bigger battery, more ram, and better specs all around. Again, companies taking a hit at each other is fun, fanboys like yourself claiming their phone is the best based on one biased review is something else entirely.

And if the OS didn't suck, they might be on to something.

 

[Imory]

The 6 is virtually unbendable in real life use(according to UnboxTherapys bend test of the 6 standing very strong and durable)

The 6 Plus may be a little more "bend prone"

I actually stopped by the Apple store, and I wasnt bending the Plus at all, I was giving it a little "bend force" just slightly a little pressure on the device to see if anything occurs, it feels rock solid and pretty tough, although I think i can see that this may be a issue down the road with the Plus as it doesnt take THAT much force to get it even slightly bent

No i wasnt bending the Plus at a Apple store, I was just giving it a little force a little push to see if it is "that easy " or if it will flex even a tiny bit, didnt budge, although I can see a little more pressure applied for longer bending the Plus everrrr so slightly, very small bend but there, who knows if this will add up over time, I highly doubt something like this blows past Apple's QC and that the Plus truly does have a flaw in normal usage , they would of found this out long time ago in testing of the device before it came out, it just seems almost impossible, like they say though, nothing is impossible. It would be beyond a epic failure of Apple if this is truly the case

I think you might be quoting the wrong person.

 

[Cool Pup]

As usual, the Fandroids rant against it despite it not having a place. I don't see many Android phone reviews that contain nearly the same amount of vitriol in the comments.

That being said, I read the whole review, and while I use a Plus, I found that review to be excellent and I look forward to the full review of the Plus when that is up.

 

[tonyy]

I usually enjoy Anandtech's reviews but this time around, not as much. Still very informative but dry.

I personally liked the Disney Land review the best.

 

[Zinthar]

Almost sounds like it was written by an Apple employee...

Except in reality it was chiefly written by Joshua Ho, who is almost exclusively an Android user for his personal phone. He tried the 5S for a few weeks and although he saw the appeal, it was too small for him to use every day.

 

[doug in albq]

Except in reality it was chiefly written by Joshua Ho, who is almost exclusively an Android user for his personal phone. He tried the 5S for a few weeks and although he saw the appeal, it was too small for him to use every day.

I actually found the review informative and not biased. I was simply referring to the fact that Anand Lal Shimpi now works for Apple. I could see how the sentence and the wink emoji might be taken the wrong way. I have never owned an Android device. Apple user since...forever.