My latest travel gadget – iPhone 6 Plus review

Finally I bought me a new travel gadget for this Christmas holidays, the new Apple iPhone 6 Plus! Essentially my handy working tool for upcoming travels during this festive season, I bought it during the pre-launch online sale a month ago and received it shortly after the official launching date in Malaysia. After using it for about a month, this is the time for me to blog this little iPhone 6 Plus review, in the context of being a gadget or tool on travel.

My iPhone 6 Plus review is going to be short and snappy. I’m not going into product details and specification since most of the iPhone fans would have known it well before since it was launched more than 2 months ago. What I’m going into details here are how it could handle our travel needs on vacation.

Basically, iPhone 6 Plus is just another iPhone. With the same operation system or IOS 8, unlike Samsung or other Android or Windows phones, good or bad, all iPhones including those of previous generations, can do mostly same things, with the same ways, except some small extra features. What made iPhone 6 Plus different by miles are these little additional features that most matter to the needs of travelers, and here are these main few important features.

Full HD IPS 5.5″ screen

Featuring 5.5″ full HD IPS screen with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and 401 ppi, it is the largest and sharpest iPhone screen so far, and is among the best screen with a perfect size for anything you would need on travel. It is also among the brightest screen to view under sunlight. For photography enthusiasts, contrast is perfect and colour reproduction is an accurate as my previous iPhone 5 and Mini iPad 2 (the 2 screens with top marks in colour accuracy), and is comparable with my calibrated DELL IPS S2340L monitor.

IPS or In Plane Switching technology is a relatively new and ideal LCD panel that promises high quality color production works. It was being popularized by iPhone and later the rest of the smartphones then the PC market. IPS is well known for its accurate color reproduction when coupled with LED back light. Most importantly, IPS has a super duper wide viewing angle of 178° with minimum color tint and contrast shift.

Colour accuracy is the most important aspect for photographers in order to create stunning photos which needs to be appeared identically across multiple screens in homes, office and galleries.

If the website is mobile friendly with flexible design layout, you can view them in tablet-like layout with more content fitted in.

Comparatively, you can only view a small section of the website on smaller screen like the iPhone 5s.

iPhone 6 plus’s 5.5″ screen is also large enough to feature a larger digital keyboard when holding it in Landscape mode, and make it identical to Mini iPad for doing your emailing, blogging, and writing jobs on travel.

 

When reading emails with iPhone 6 Plus held horizontally, preview of each email is showed simultaneously, just like iPad!

Larger keyboard with more common used keys inserted. One of the most useful keys is the Undo.

Does it mean we don’t need a tablet any more? Not quite though. There is still one feature that the iPhone 6 Plus is missing. Please read on.

Larger screen means more website contents could be viewed at a time.

Larger battery size means longer battery life

Yes. iPhone 6 Plus features the largest built-in battery than all previous iPhone models with 2,915 mAh (more than double of what you can find in iPhone 5). It simply means that iPhone 6 Plus is capable of keeping it running for easily one full day of outdoor travel without needing any power bank! Extra loading for hefty power banks are saved!

I tried to used Waze (the power eating navigation App) for 3 hours on motorway and kept it running for another 3 hours in the background and it is still hanging in there with half of the juices to spare! This is great news for free and independent travelers who need essentially enormous battery powers to search for places as they go along.

With iPhone 6 Plus and a Data day pass from your network provider, you can go wherever you can for a whole day in Japan! For your information, if I use Waze with my iPhone 5, I would need a charger after 3 hour usage.

8MP iSight camera with Optical Stabilization

This little extra feature is utmost important to photographer and it is only available in iPhone 6 Plus, not even iPhone 6. Comparing all other iPhone with only digital stabilization, iPhone 6 Plus has the ‘real’ stabilization function with floating lens to counter the minor movement in our hand when pressing down the shutter. Combining with its new F2.2 wide open aperture lens, it produces perfectly sharp images even in low lights with slow shutter speeds. In other words, taking photos at night is possible with this phone!

Apart from the optical stabilization, its White Balance is as good as the iPhone 5 or 5s, so it is great to capture your food explore shots in any restaurants with dim and warm lights! In fact, it wins over my Nikon D7000 DSLR in terms of accurate White Balance!

Also for the first time from iPhone, it captures marvellous 1080p HD video in 60 frames per second!

Motion sensor and Barometer

With the new M8 motion coprocessor with sensor and an aneroid barometer built in, travelers can now record, check and review the mileage they have been walking on travel, the numbers of steps and the height they have been hiking!

Bottom shows a row of circulars holes with purposes. Eight holes in a row work as speaker on its left, single little hole on its right acts as microphone, larger hole for handsfree 3.5mm jack and the center large elongated round hole fits the USB charger.

Along the left side wall are the ON/OFF button and the flushed SIM card drawer.

The multi functional elongated buttons (for either volume increase / decrease or camera shutter) and sound On/ Mute buttons are on the right sides of the iPhone 6 Plus.

Jutting out a little on the rear cover is the main camera F2.2 fixed lens with the useful Optical Stabilization feature. Dual colour flash light with its sensor are closely beside.

The beautiful round edged shatter strengthened Gorilla glass flushing perfectly with the Aluminium round edges.

Champagne Gold is my latest preferred colour for mobile phone. Those white stripes are essentially there to strengthen the phone cellular reception.

Being my working horse on travel, my iPhone 6 Plus needs to be protected sufficiently against drops, knocks, scratches and mild raindrops. So I got it a jacket: a flappy full cover KICKFOLIO leather case from ODOYO. The soft touch case helps me to hold my iPhone 6 plus securely in my small hand, and the speaker cut out and the little flap pocket on the cover are a nice touch too! Generally, I’m satisfied with its quality, except the easily stained cotton white colour finish.

Compare iPhone 6 Plus with Mini iPad 3

This is the common question people asking nowadays. Since iPhone 6 Plus is regarded as a phablet with its large screen size, can it replace at least the Mini iPad on travel so we could take some loads off our bagage? I’m afraid it’s still a ‘NO’ for me. Although they are both doing about the same thing practically, one thing the iPhone 6 Plus is still lacking (until Apple is willing to unlock it), is the ability to transfer images from a DSLR (unless Nikon is willing to have WiFi and GPS built-in) by using SD cards and iPad card reader. Without which, I still need my Mini iPad to backup images captured on travel, edit them with PS and upload them to Flickr.

Conclusion

Overall, my iPhone 6 Plus review in travel context ends with one conclusion. This large iPhone is surely the best mobile phone out there for travelers to use as a primary blogging tool, place searching, web-browsing, book reading tool as well as a secondary photo taking camera for close-up, portraits and foods. A really good device to carry along with on travel if it is not too big for your pockets! – Travel Feeder, your travel photo blog