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| Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus |
By 2014 the iPhone had been around for 7 years and although each generation of the device had added new features, increasingly the iPhone was lagging behind on screen size. 2013’s iPhone 5S was particularly weak in this respect, but the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launched the following year broke the mould of old iPhones and created a completely new one.
The standard iPhone 6 came with a 4.7” 750 x 1334 pixel display, a useful improvement over the 4.0” 620 x 1136 pixel panel in the older one. But it was the 6 Plus with a 5.5” full HD 1080 x 1920 pixel panel that propelled the iPhone into the era of the modern high-end smartphone. The iPhone also came with Apple Pay, kick-starting the concept of mobile payments.
The 6 Plus is perhaps the pinnacle of Apple’s iPhone design. The convenient front-mounted fingerprint sensor, the notchless screen and the 3.5mm audio jack are all the sorts of things that we miss. At this time Apple’s design was led by what customers wanted, not what designers wanted.
On the negative side, both iPhones were prone to bending and a widespread fault with the screen called “touch disease” proved an annoyance. There were other more minor faults and niggles too. Despite this, 220 million iPhone 6 devices were sold over its lifetime.
Perhaps not an iconic design, the iPhone 6 was one of those moments where a number of relatively small improvements all came together at once to make a truly satisfying product. Indeed, the same basic design is still available in today’s iPhone 8 and 8 Plus for those who think the all-screen iPhone XS is going a bit far.
Image credit: Apple
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