Apple iPHONE 6S review

I have really big hands.
It’s not something I usually think about; you don’t ever really think about your hands. Those are my hands, you might idly remark to yourself from time to time. I wonder if I can use them for anything good.
But using a smartphone with a huge screen, like the iPhone 6 Plus, forces you to constantly consider the size of your hands. This phone looks huge, even in my admittedly large hands, you might think to yourself. Or: Dammit, I can’t reach that button without using my other hand.
Or: If my children and my children’s children and their children and all the children after that keep contorting their hands to use phones like this for generations, will our hands evolve to have gigantic thumbs?
It is not often that a new iPhone threatens to alter the course of human evolution, is what I’m saying. But here we are.
I have really big hands.
Also: read our iPhone 6 review
The iPhone 6 Plus isn’t beautiful the way the iPhone 4 was beautiful. No one’s going to hold it up and say it reminds them of a gorgeous old Leica camera. It’s not sleek and dangerous-looking, like the black iPhone 5. It’s not flashy like the gold iPhone 5S. My review unit is silver and white, and with its rounded edges and aluminum back it reminds me of nothing so much as the first-gen iPhone, scaled up. The white front panel makes the phone seem even bigger than it is; the space gray version has a black front panel that blends more seamlessly into the frame, which makes the entire thing appear smaller. But there’s no escaping the sheer size of the thing. The screen itself is bigger than an entire iPhone 5S, and it dwarfs even the new, larger iPhone 6. I found myself carrying it around almost like you’d curry a Moleskine notebook, tucked into the curve of my fingers. After a while you begin to realize that Apple had no choice but to move the sleep / wake button to the side of the phone; you’d never be able to reach it otherwise.
The iPhone 6 Plus is a big phone because it has to be; Apple made a big phone in 2014 because consumers have demanded big phones. Samsung’s empire is built on gigantic phones that keep getting bigger — the Galaxy S5 is 5.1 inches, while the Note 3 and Note 4 are 5.7 inches — and while Apple initially derided screen size as an unworkable gimmick, it turns out that bigger sells. (Steve Jobs famously called big phones "Hummers" but it turns out that’s only an insult California.)
Big phones like the Note 3 work because they defer almost the entire front of the phone to the display; you don’t need to put a lot of stuff around a screen that big. But the iPhone 6 Plus has large top and bottom bezels that make a big phone even bigger. Apple’s tied to its iconic round home button, while Samsung can get away with a rectangular home button that takes up less space.
The extra height increases the surfboard-like nature of the 6 Plus — it’s a well-balanced package, but it’s so long it can feel top-heavy if you don’t grab it in the middle. It’s less stable to hold in one hand than Samsung’s Note 3, which is a bit more squat and squared-off. It’s a tiny difference in spec-sheet dimensions, but in day-to-day use the Note 3 definitely feels smaller. (Samsung’s upcoming Note 4 is a tiny bit taller and skinnier, but it’s not out yet, so it’s hard to judge.)
Huge phones get to have huge batteries, and the iPhone 6 Plus is a huge phone with a huge battery: I consistently got about two days of battery life from the 6 Plus in regular daily use — slightly more than the day and a half we got from the iPhone 6, and basically the same as the Note 3. iPhone battery life tends to fade quickly, however, and I dread the day I inevitably stuff the 6 Plus into a battery case and make it even bigger.
Apple manages to make up for the slightly more awkward dimensions of the 6 Plus with finer materials than the weird fake-leather plastic of the Note 3. The back of the iPhone 6 Plus is a smooth aluminum, marred only by the protruding camera lens and an ugly set of plastic lines at the top and bottom that allow the phone’s various antennas to speak to the world. That aluminum feels quite nice, but it’s also a little slippery, especially when you factor in the size of the phone and its rounded sides. The iPhone 6 Plus is the first iPhone that looks and works better in a case — I’ve been using Apple’s leather sleeve and it makes the phone easier to hold, evens out that camera bump, and hides the weird lines on the back.