Apple iPhone hits market for six with 10m bought in first weekend

After a record-breaking opening weekend of sales for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, which saw customers queue up around the world to purchase 10 million of the larger-screened smartphones, it's clear Apple has a major hit on its hands.

Tomorrow the iPhones 6 is released in more than 20 new countries, including Ireland. In a pre-release briefing with Apple executives, they suggested the hype over this year’s release is similar to the excitement over the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, and with lines stretching up to 20 blocks in Manhattan, not to mention fevered TV coverage of the phone’s release, they have a point.

This year’s sales figures beat the opening weekend sales of the iPhone 5S and 5C last year, when nine million units were sold, and far ahead of the five million iPhone 5 units sold in 2012.

Screen size

The most obvious change is the screen size, with the iPhone 6 growing significantly to 12cm (4.7 inches), much bigger than the iPhone 5S screen's 10cm (four inches) screen. The iPhone 6 Plus sees Apple make its debut in the so-called "phablet" space pioneered by Samsung with its Note series.

It looks just like the iPhone 6, but at 14cm (5.5 inches), in the hand it almost feels like an entirely new category of iOS device. Indeed, the footprint of the entire iPhone 5S is smaller than just the screen of the iPhone 6 Plus. It’s quite the monster, though smaller than the latest Samsung Note 4.

The screens are marvels of engineering, with a crisp 1,334 x 750 pixel resolution providing 38 per cent more viewing area than iPhone 5s, while the 1920 x 1080 resolution provides 88 per cent more viewing area with nearly three times as many pixels as the 5S.

Bending Both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are a shade thinner than the 5S, 6.9mm and 7.1mm compared with

7.6mm. That skinny frame has come at an apparent cost, however, with reports from some early buyers suggesting the 6 Plus can be prone to bending under significant or sustained pressure.

Apple has long touted the thumb-span width of the iPhone as a major feature, but with these new models that attribute has been sacrificed.

To compensate, Apple has developed a one-handed operation mode called “reachability”, prompted by a double tap of the home button, which sees the screen drop towards the bottom half to bring important functions within thumb’s reach. It’s definitely clever, but at the same time feels like an elegant hack rather than an obvious improvement in usability.

To further aid one-handed operation, the sleep/wake button has been moved from the top of the device to the side – it will take a while to get used to that alteration.

Curved design

The biggest design change is a curved edge instead of the sharp right-angled edges from the iPhone 5S, a design that has defined the iPhone’s form factor since the iPhone 4.

In that sense this revised design has been a long time coming and dramatically changes the feel of the device in your hand – more like an ocean- smoothed pebble than a minimalist piece of engineering.

Its curviness harkens back to the rounded edges of the original iPhone, which looks like a dinky old family heirloom in comparison to the new designs. At the time of its release, however, the original iPhone appeared as big and unwieldy compared to its small- screened competition of Nokias and Motorola Razrs as the iPhone 6 Plus does to the iPhone 5S.

Camera

The iPhone 6 Plus features optical image stabilisation, in which the lens moves to counteract for camera shake, which makes for significantly less blur and much improved low- light performance.

The slightly raised camera lens on the back of the device is a very un-Apple-like compromise to accommodate the necessary distance between lens and sensor, but really isn’t so significant as to ruin the impressively svelte body.

Given that Apple's lead in industrial design had been whittled away by rival handsets on Google's Android platform, such as the HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S5, LG G3 and Sony Xperia Z3, a hands-on preview is enough to suggest these two new iPhones have seen Apple retake the initiative, though only a comprehensive review can determine if they live up to the engineering excellence in day-to-day usage.