Somewhere in between the keynote and the madness that was pre-ordering online last Friday, Jared and I decided what made the most sense was for TouchArcade to at minimum have one of each type of iPhone. With games like Galcon 2 doing different things with the iPhone 6 Plus, it’d be weird if we didn’t have a way to test those games out, take screenshots, and things like that, right? Well, I volunteered to get the iPhone 6 Plus, or I’ve taken to calling, it, the iPhone XXL and… It’s big. I mean, real big.
What’s curious about it is that using the device itself is amazing. It perfectly straddles what I love so much about the iPhone and the iPad mini. I love the iPhone because (obviously) it’s everywhere I go, and I totally love the iPad mini because that additional screen space gives you so much more breathing room for actually doing stuff and playing games. My iPad mini has (essentially since the release of the original iPad mini) has become my “main" iOS device. It’s only gotten better with the Retina Display.
The iPhone XXL is really the best of both worlds there. Even just using it for basic tasks like finding an iMessage conversation thread or looking for an email, being able to see so much more on screen is incredibly nice. For instance, on the iPhone 5S you can see 8 iMessage conversations at once, on the iPhone XXL, you can see 11. Those kind of differences are everywhere in the standard iOS UI. The best comparison I can come up with is it’s sort of like when you’re on a flight and you luck into sitting in the emergency exit row. It’s not like the flight is that much different, but having those few extra inches of leg room makes the overall experience more enjoyable.
That being said, I’m definitely second guessing myself when it comes to getting the iPhone XXL just because of how physically large it is. I’m pretty weird about the jeans I wear, drinking lots of the dry denim Kool-Aid, and owning my fair share of skinny jeans. Not skin tight mind you, but definitely more form fitting than your typical pair of Levi’s. The iPhone XXL doesn’t really fit that well into any of my front pockets.
The main problem being, the phone is really tall, and while I can get the whole thing in my pocket, sitting down is a little weird because it pushes the top pretty hard into my leg/hip/whatever you call the area south of your belt on your leg. So, I’m definitely going to turn into one of those guys who takes their phone out of their pocket whenever they sit down. Additionally, I think the iPhone XXL might be the first iPhone that I go get some Ghost Armor for, just because the top corner of the screen is going to be sliding dangerously close to the jean pocket rivets, which just generally seems bad for business.
But I love the idea of the gigantic battery that comes packing in the iPhone XXL. So much of the reason why I primarily game on my iPad mini is because of dead battery anxiety. With so much of what I do being closely tied to my iPhone, having a dead battery isn’t great. I usually avoid playing many high-end 3D games on my iPhone, just because nothing seems to drink your battery faster. Playing a half hour of Modern Combat and then potentially missing a really important email just isn’t worth it to me. Early reviews of the iPhone XXL have said people have been getting upwards of two days of use out of it without charging, which will go a long way to getting me to not caring quite so much about keeping my battery full while I’m out.
The power button being moved to the side is taking a surprising amount of getting used to, with more than one audible “WTF" after pressing the top right corner a couple times trying to turn the screen off before being like, “Oh yeah." I also picked up the Apple leather case, which is really nice and has enough of a front bezel-like protrusion to have the phone sitting on its face without the screen being in contact with the surface you’ve got it on and enough thickness on the back to prevent the camera lens from rubbing when you set it down screen up.
I’m still waiting for my iCloud backup to restore itself on my iPhone XXL, so I don’t really have any gaming impressions just yet, but I presume it’ll be very similar to the previous iterations of the iPhone in that some games are broken and some run a little better. I think the days of massive leaps in performance (like the difference between the iPhone 3G and 3GS) are behind us, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of comparisons we can squeeze out later in the day.
Overall, I like the iPhone XXL, I’m just not sure what I’m going to do about the whole pocket situation. Perhaps it’s time I resign myself to getting a murse. It’s 2014, after all.
