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>> Trisha: Hey guys, welcome back to Sourcefed, I’m Trisha Hershberger and a new iPhone
was revealed today!!
Well, 2 of them actually, and a watch!
And since many people await the tech giant’s announcements like college kids await pregnancy
results, here’s a quick rundown of what happened today in Cupertino.
Stressing the Apple ideals that being first isn’t as important as being best and it’s
all about thinking differently, Tim Cook announced the iPhone6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, both thinner
than ever before with a sleek curved glass display.
Both phones are larger than the iPhone 5 – the 6 being 4.7” and the 6 plus at a whopping
5.5”.
The 6 Plus will offer split screen and horizontal landscape views – both new features to iPhones.
As one would expect in an evolutionary upgrade, we see a higher pixel density display, a faster
processor, an upgraded motion processor, and faster LTE and wifi capabilities.
Battery life is said to be around the same or better than the iPhone 5.
While the camera on the new phones still sits at 8mp, Apple has upgraded the iSight capabilities
giving faster autofocus and the ability to record slomo video at 120 or 240fps.
Speaking of video, the 6 Plus comes with optical image stabilization with a lens that actually
adjusts up, down, left and right.
The front facing cam did not get an mp upgrage that we know of either but it’s new aperture
will allow in 80% more light for those low light selfies – oh and burst mode is now
available on the front camera, too.
Both phones will be available Sept 19th, offered in a 16gb-128gb range for between 200-500
dollars with 2 year contract.
The one more thing of today’s event was, as anticipated, the Apple Watch.
As someone who has never been very excited by the Smart Watch market, Apple managed to
hit a lot of the common smart watch challenges on the head.
Personalization – there’s a ton of bands to choose from as well as home screen looks
and notification types.
This has been a major hurdle since a watch has always been a personal style choice and
one watch, no matter how cool the tech, can fit them all.
Fitting it all on a tiny screen – it seems you either get a huge screen to fit it all
in or a crowded convoluted display – to tackle this issue, the Apple Watch has a “digital
crown” dial on the side of the face that zooms in and out or takes you to your home
screen.
They also did away with typing on the watch face – thank god – and even did away with
the voice to text dependency common on other watches.
You can choose from a pre-determined response, animated emoticon, or audio message.
Apple is so confident they’ve gotten past the small screen challenge that they are even
releasing a smaller, women’s watch size.
As far as things people value in a traditional watch, battery life and scratch resistance,
the Apple Watch face will be sapphire, and while the charging mechanism does look sleek,
if it can’t last all day, I don’t care how cute it is.
Of course, there are plenty of fitness monitoring features built in to Apple Watch with new
health software, pretty much eliminating your need for other fitbands – that is if you
decide to shell out the $349 for the watch when it’s available early 2015.
And that’s $349 in addition to your phone, which it needs to work.
$349 is indeed very high price for a phone accessory, but good news is it isn’t iPhone
6 exclusive, it will also work with the iPhone 5 series, too.
So spread it out… you don’t have to buy it all at once… it’s easier when you budget
over time – or at least that’s how Apple wants you to see it.
Things we didn’t hear about today include sapphire displays on the next line of iPhones
as well as the ability to record 4k video.
And before you get all excited that a lot of this tech has been seen before in other
devices, remember, according to Apple, it’s not about being first, it’s about being
best.
Marketing!
So what are you excited about?
Not excited about?
Are you shouting ‘take my money’ or no thanks, I’ll pass on this one?
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