By 
In case you’ve been living under a rock (or simply haven’t been keeping up with Apple news), it’s looking like the iPhone 6 will officially be unveiled in 2 weeks. Although “iPhone 6” was never actually mentioned, Apple did begin sending out invites for a September 9th event in Cupertino where the tag line was “Wish we could say more.” Oh, you don’t need to. We know what you’re up to.
There’s been enough leaks in recent months that we have a pretty good idea of what to expect from the event. Perform a simple search on YouTube for “iPhone 6” and look at how many people got their hands on alleged dummy units of the bigger, softer 4.7-inch iPhone 6. But with such a big jump in screen size (and still roughly the same bezel ratio), you may be asking yourself how the upcoming phone stacks up against Android’s greatest in terms of overall size.
Luckily, with dummy units being so easy to come by these days (security is a bit more lax at Apple lately), we found a few videos that compare the upcoming i6 against Android heavyweights like the Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8, and Samsung’s most recent answer to the iPhone 6: the recently announced Samsung Galaxy iPhone Alpha.
After taking a look at the videos, we were a bit surprised to find that, despite having a much smaller 4.7-inch display, overall the iPhone 6 is pretty large. This was mostly in part to that extra hunk of bezel along the bottom of the phone where Apple’s Touch ID home button sits.
The iPhone 6 was only a little smaller than the HTC One M8 (which could have come out a lot differently had HTC only ditched their useless black bar bezel along the bottom) almost the same height as the Galaxy S5 (although a little more narrow), and nearly identical to the Samsung Galaxy Alpha.
We can only hope that with the iPhone 6 said to come in 2 sizes — 4.7-inch model and a 5.5-inch version — Android OEMs will finally catch on and realize 1-size doesn’t fit all and that consumers need at least 2 size choices when shopping for a high-end smartphone. But given the fact that Android has had 4.7-inch screen sizes for years now, we’re sure many OEMs see smaller devices as a “step back.” Hey, at least Sony is on the right track with the rumored Xperia Z3 Compact. Gotta speak with your wallet, folks.
http://imgur.com/gallery/g2bLj
Imgur makes the workday so much better. Each and every time.
All these unnecessary disses to the M8. It looks beautiful. As is. Bezel and all. I will never understand the fascination with bezel-less phones, talk about fugly. But anyway, on the actual subject of the iPhone… in the last month I was in three discussions with iPhone using friends regarding Android (specifically my phone the M8) vs their iPhone, ALL THREE OF THEM said something like “Zomg I could like never like use a phone that’s like that like big”… and I am now super anxious, and excited, to have conversation part 2 with them when they are suddenly holding an iPhone as big as mine. HA.
I think bezels are necessary to some extent, but I want them as minimal on the bottom of the phone as possible.
Now that capacitive buttons have essentially moved “up” on the phone to its display, it’s silly to have all that wasted space on the bottom.
And the more wasted space on the bottom of the phone, the harder it is to reach all the UI elements on the screen with 1 hand and that’s not good.
Different strokes I guess. I personally don’t have any problems interacting with the phone one-handedly and I have pretty small hands for a guy. I try to picture the M8 without that black band at the bottom and I think I prefer it the way it is. Plus if HTC was truthful about that space being needed for the speakers and such I’m more than happy to have it. ;)
I have pretty small hands as well and I handled the M8 and currently own the S5 perfectly fine with one hand. Agree with you.
I agree with you and @Chris Chavez..I also do not care THAT much about bezel..just has to be well utilized…but like Chris said, the M8 has wasted space with that bezel below..IMHO I think HTC should have kept the capacitive Keys.
I feel that would of been a fair compromise. Have an actual 5 inch real estate (instead of 4.8 w/ on screen buttons) and utilize the bottom bezel capacitive buttons….
They have display drivers there and they were trying to make sense look more stock like.
I’ve pretty much given up on one handed use of todays smartphones. I’ve small hands so I was pretty much screwed shortly after the original Droid came out and the screen size race went full steam.
Not all iPhone users are like that though. Some of us have been really irked for a while now that Apple hasn’t offered us a bigger phone. Which is I think the entire reason why Apple is finally going to release them. in fact I would guess that bigger screen options is the number 1 reason why people switch away from an iPhone to Android and we may very well see several people return to an iphone once they have bigger screens.
My girlfriend and I are both iPhone users and we bought Galaxy S4’s last year but returned them a couple days later because we both hated the OS. But we both loved the big screen and were sad to have to go down to a 4″ screen on the 5C’s we replaced them with.
Personally I’ll be picking up the 5.5″ iPhone 6 asap and she has indicated she feels the same way. I also know a couple other iphone uing friends who have said they really want the 5.5″ as well.
Screen size is the reason I switched from apple. No way I could ever go back now but you’re definitely right. And I’m sorry your first android experience was a touch wiz one. I can’t stand it either.
its cute that you both feel the same way about a mobile OS.
People are funny. When Apple was going no higher than 3.5 inches, everybody that had/and or have iPhones couldn’t imagine anything bigger. Now that its looking like the iPhone 6 will probably be 4.7 inches now all of a sudden that’s acceptable. Watch the YouTube video, the guy doing the comparison is good sacrificing one-handed use for a bigger screen now, all of a sudden. If Apple would have decided to keep it the same size, he wouldn’t have even made a comment about it smh.
It’s sad really, on some other forum I made a similar comment and got the iSheep so made all they could do was flame and act like the petulant little children they really are
It will be very interesting to see how suddenly smart watches will be a thing once Apple “invents” smart watches here soon
Wow for the Galaxy Alpha looks like an iPhone joke when it looks like the SGS2 with metal sides. You’re 3 years too late for that one
It’s not that it looks like the iPhone, it’s that it’s made of metal, with a screen close to the size of the iPhone 6 and released so close to the iPhone launch.
It even has the lower resolution display, like the iPhone.
Didn’t they also remove the SD card slot lol?
And seal in the battery.
Iphone 6 = somewhere between galaxy s3 and s4… But probably less awesome… and more expensive but worry not, the iPhone will continue to reign in the pretentious dept with a larger clueless sheep base.
Why does anyone even consider the iPhone relevant anymore?
because it has really good performance, a good quality screen, good audio, a good camera, has the most accessories, and is often times the 1st option developers/companies consider when making new apps. It also can be a little bit simpler for those who arent tech geeks.
u just schooled him…
The iPhone seems to be nothing more than a mobile way of using social media these days. I don’t consider it a smart device at all.
Don’t see the big deal about its screen or audio either unless you’re using a 2011 device from another manufacturer.
Good performance is easy for it to achieve seeing as it can’t display the full internet on its browser, something important to me.
they have other browsers, you can get chrome for example. iPad’s have excellent performance too, so the horsepower is there. The screen is a nice quality screen, the rez is lower than android flagships of course, but the display quality up there, the audio of my girlfriend’s iphone5 is better than my old nexus 4 and my G3.
Not saying its the king of all phones or anything or that I’d ever switch,i simply don’t like my home screen looking like my app drawer. But its a very solid device.
Apple isn’t some struggling little company that manages to surprise with a few cool tricks. They have tons of money yet they are always behind everyone else instead of being way ahead of everyone else.
Ios devices still can’t play flash so they still can’t display the full internet. Doesn’t matter how much power there is if you get a watered down version of the Web.
Ipads are a huge waste of money. For half the price of one I got my windows tablet that does everything my desktop does. Runs all my windows legacy software and can even play games that blow any mobile os games out of the water.
What’s the point of all the power if all you’re left with is an oversized iPhone?
Iphones also have dismal battery life. The battery cycle of an iPhone 5s is comparable to that of my old HTC desire hd and even that 4 year old phone had more function than any iPhone.
Other than looking cool n trendy while uploading to social media, I can’t see why an iPhone is relevant anymore.
I use puffin on my ipad which let’s you use flash. I love android a lot more than ios but you can easily get flash running on ios with the right app.
As you cannot even change the default browser, I don’t think we can say Chrome is a good alternative on iOS.
you really think youd be using chrome on IOS? It’s a chrome skinned Safari…
i dont care what people use, and i almost never use “desktop version” of a website on my phone anyway, i was simply saying alternatives exist.
Because silicon valley practices an iphone-first mentality when launching companies. So they will always be the most relevant.
Relevant? Have you seen iOS 8?
Its going to be easier for people to stay with iOS and easier for people who have been using Android to switch over now…
They literally copy and pasted all Android features in their latest iOS 8…
I’m not interested in switching to ios so none of that matters to me.
relevant means adding cool things that android can never have, not been there done there stuff
what was copied you say?
because regardless of how awesome android is with what it can do, it still is relatively “crap” in its own way. i am saying it because i still stuck with android up until the galaxy S5. that phone froze up on me too many times, even after updates. i gave up on Samsung for anything. so i went on back to the nexus 5 and loved it. it was far more stable but i still had my freeze ups from time to time. maybe it was my luck. so i left to try out the iPhone. okay it copies features from android but i have to say i have no issues like freezing up. and even though it has a much smaller battery, it still lasts all day with my use. just like it did with my galaxy S5. i don’t think i am going to return to android anytime soon or ever because of my experience.
More bezel, less screen, crap OS…moving on
That crappy OS can play “bioshock”.
seriously?? O_o
BioShock?
That crappy OS can “play” Bioshock.
FYP.
http://kotaku.com/bioshock-for-ios-is-the-worst-way-to-play-a-great-game-1629271189
I read somewhere that the 2 different iPhone sizes will have different internal specs.
Apple’s OS will always, to me, be its anchor holding it back. Their hardware isn’t really a problem as it is always fairly good. People think this new iPhone will me “magical,” but will merely be a bigger screen with the same old OS etc. once the new phone luster wears off after the first week or 2 and disappointment will kick in as it is not all that different.
The OS is great for teens, grandma or soccer moms who want a smartphone with apps but don’t really use it for any particular purpose (just general usage). After using an iPhone since the 3GS (many years up to 2014) and recently buying a Galaxy S5, I cannot fathom how so many business users and businesses swear by iOS. Yes, the app selection is great and the apps are more polished on iOS. But the OS is missing basic level functions I use ever day on Android.
For just one example, I want to attach a document/file to an email to send to a client (be it from dropbox, google drive, or even a pdf app, whatever app is may be or just general phone storage) in reply to their inquiry. On Android I go into my mail app, hit reply, hit the paperclip icon, and I can select 10+ different sources/apps/storage to attach a file/document from and tap and done.
On iOS it is completely convoluted and you cannot reply to an email while attaching a document/file. You have to go into that app the file/doc resides in, “export” the document into a new mail message in the mail app. You can’t even reply to the string of emails that client already wrote you so you just lost that train of thought with the client and makes things convoluted to keep track of. Apple allows you to do in-line attaching of pictures, why not files from other apps even if you do not want to grant file system access?
I still cannot fathom how the iSheep and businesses praise this OS to their deaths that cannot do very basic core functions such as the above. How can you praise business use but cannot attach a document/file to an email? It boggles my mind as this is basic basic business functionality. This was a “want” on most iOS-based websites before the announcing of iOS, so clearly other users miss this function.
I could name a list of 20 basic functions that iOS cannot do like this due to its sandboxed mentality that will probably be there by 2020 at this pace of implementing Android features into their OS.
It’s 2014 and you can’t even attach files to emails on ios? I don’t understand why people would even consider this?
You can’t even install a basic caller id app either. The latest and greatest solution for IOS is to take a screenshot of the incoming call and then let truecaller parse the number from the picture taken and then make a query on it. WTH?
Before they allowed true multi-tasking in a recent update, I was contracted to write a location based app in iOS and Android. To receive 24/7 GPS updates, the only official solution was to leave the GPS on continuously, thus draining the battery.
The interesting thing was the tricks people came up with like play a silent audio track since music players were one of the few things allowed to run in the background. But parsing a number from a picture!?! Wow, that’s crazy!
I think you nailed it. I’ve been on Android since the G1 and my boss bought me an iPhone for work purposes. After a week it ended up just sitting in a desk drawer because it just felt sooo simplistic. Aside from the lack of widgets, swipe keyboards, and USB mass storage, I couldn’t quite “pin point” the problem. However, your word “sandboxed” pretty much explains everything.
Note: I’m not an Android fanboy either as I love my Macbook Retina and I’ve always been bothered by the lack of polish on Android. And I think programming for iOS is a million times simpler than Android even though I’m a Java programmer but that’s a topic for another day.
In dealing with my daughter’s iOS devices, I very much get a Windows 3.1 vibe from the interface. You have a bunch of groups with shortcuts to various apps that can be arranged any which way, with no real organization. This includes things like Settings, which really shouldn’t require searching for. I like that I can just drag down the status bar and get to settings. I like that the app drawer can be alphabetized.