Apple finally joins the big-phone party. With the 5.5-inch display on the new iPhone 6 Plus and the 4.7-inch screen on the iPhone 6 — not to mention a raft of new under-the-hood features — Apple fans no longer have to suffer from screen envy.
And just to make the party livelier, Apple unveiled its first series of smartwatches: the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Sport and the golden Apple Watch Edition — but you’ll have to wait at least until next year to see them.
The big new iPhones will be available Sept. 19 — with preorders starting Sept. 12 — offer a major visual upgrade from the 4-inch displays on the iPhone 5c and 5s. They feature Apple’s new, powerful 64-bit A8 processor and will run the new iOS 8 software, which will be available Sept. 17.
With two-year plans, the iPhone 6 Plus will sell for $299, $399 and $499 with 16, 64 and 128 gigabytes of user memory, respectively, while the iPhone 6 will retail for $199, $299 and $399 at the same memory levels.
The new iPhones, as well as the older iPhone 5, 5c and 5s, will work with the new Apple smartwatches. The unveiled wristwear includes usability features not seen in Android and other smartwatches seen to date. The screen is not only touch sensitive, but also detects different levels of pressure. The crown — the small knob used for winding mechanical watches — is used to zoom the screen image when necessary.
A key new feature of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and smartwatches is Apple Pay, a secure wireless payment system that lets users pay at retail locations by just tapping their devices on near-field communication, or NFC, receiver. It doesn’t actually store credit card or PIN numbers but instead creates a secure, one-time use authentication process using a special Secure Element chip embedded in the gadgets.
Apple has already partnered with American Express, MasterCard and Visa for transaction services and with food and retail vendors like McDonald’s, Macy’s, Subway, Duane Reade and Walgreens to enable Apple Pay at all their locations.
While the new iPhones are smaller than some megascreened Android smartphones like Samsung’s 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 4, they nevertheless provide the extra eyeball space Apple fans have been clamoring for. The 1,920-by-1,080-pixel Retina HD screen on the iPhone 6 Plus, for example, offers 88% more viewing area and almost three times as many pixels as the iPhone 5s. The 4.7-inch, 1,334-by-750 pixel Retina HD screen on the iPhone 6 has 38% more viewing area than the screen on the iPhone 5s.
The bigger screens are assisted by a new graphics processing engine, which means that videos and games will play much faster and smoother on the iPhone 6 series phones than on previous iPhones.
The rear camera on the iPhone 6 series phones remains at 8 megapixels, but gains new features like Focus Pixel technology, which enables faster autofocusing, and improved image processing and stabilization hardware.
The camera has a F2.2 lens, which is good for low-light conditions and enables faster shutter speeds in bright light, and “true tone” color technology to improve the honest rendition of colors.
Downloading data should be faster on the new iPhones, according to Apple, thanks to LTE technology that speeds top download rates from the 100 megabits per second, or mbps, on the iPhone 5 series phones to 150 mbps on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
The new phones will be offered by more than 200 carriers worldwide and will also offer Wi-Fi calling, which is new to Apple but has been offered on Android smartphones like the HTC One M8 for some time.
After enjoying a “Rocky” moment as he took a victory pose with his arms above his head as the event crowd cheered loudly, Apple CEO Tim Cook showed off the Apple Watch, which comes in stainless steel; the sweatproof Apple Watch Sport, which uses an anodized aluminum case and a sports band; and the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition, which he said will be available at prices starting at $349.
Cook said the new watch interface, which uses the same iOS software as the iPhones, is designed for “lightweight interactions” that don’t require much attention.
All have small speakers and provide vibration feedback for silent notifications. The digital crown also serves as the home button and provides access to the voice-actuated features of Siri, which the Apple Watch units also support. A button below the crown offers one-touch access to favorite contacts while a swipe up from the bottom of the Apple Watch screen will bring up snippets of personalized info such as text messages, sports scores or stock prices.
New watch apps have already been developed for the Apple Watch units, which will come in two sizes — essentially men’s and women’s editions. These include a BMW app that can remind you where your car is parked, and a Pinterest app that can provide walking directions once you get close to a location you’ve “pinned” on one of your boards.
At the end of the special press event in Cupertino, Calif., Apple announced that the band U2 would release its new album “Songs of Innocence” free to all users of Apple’s iTunes music service. The album, which includes 11 new songs as well as some U2 classics, is available immediately and will remain free for the next five weeks.
With Michael Walsh
