During today’s official unveiling of the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and Apple Watch, Apple ran through a large number of details on each product, but did not discuss several others. Here are a few items that you might not have heard during the Apple Event.
The Apple Watch will come in 38mm tall and 42mm tall case sizes. Silver 316L stainless steel, DLC (diamond-like carbon) space black stainless steel, silver aluminum, space gray aluminum, 18-karat yellow gold and 18-karat rose gold versions will be available—two finishes for each material. Apple is calling the glass in the aluminum versions “strengthened Ion-X glass,” while both of the other versions use sapphire crystal. No specifications have been released for the Apple Watch display, besides a reference to it being “Retina” with “incredibly high pixel density.” An Apple press release notes that in addition to NFC wireless support for Apple Pay transactions, “Apple Watch also features Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 4.0 to pair seamlessly with your iPhone.”
Apple is positioning the watches as “collections.” The stainless steel Apple Watch will come in “18 models,” differing in the color of case stainless steel, sport band (white or black), classic leather (black only), Milanese loop (silver only), modern buckle (three colors), leather loop (three colors), or stainless steel link (two colors), with case sizes varying between colors. Apple Watch Sport will come in 10 versions—five plastic wristbands across two sizes and two case colors—while Apple Watch Edition will apparently come in six versions, varying in size, sport band, “modern” or “classic” leather buckles, and gold color. Three of the Editions will be 38mm, while the other three will be 42mm.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus add support for H.265, an improved video codec that is used for FaceTime over Cellular calls. FaceTime videos and front-facing selfies will be assisted by a modestly improved front camera, which goes from an f/2.4 aperture to an f/2.2 aperture—faster, for less motion blur—and gains improved face detection when snapping photos, just like the rear camera. As noted briefly during the event, multi-shot Burst mode has been added to the front-facing camera. It remains at 1280×960 still photo resolution and is still capable of only 720p video recording.
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus rear camera has the same 1.5-micron pixel size as the iPhone 5s, and the same 8-Megapixel resolution as the last several iPhones, but once again benefits from faster processing speeds and pixel quality improvements. As noted during the event, only the iPhone 6 Plus has true optical image stabilization—the ability of the sensor to “float” within the camera module and thereby reduce blur in images—while the iPhone 6 omits that feature in favor of a digital “auto image stabilization” feature also found in the iPhone 5s.
The iPhone 5c will come only in an 8GB capacity for “free” on contract, while the iPhone 5s will be available in 16GB ($99) and 32GB ($149) capacities.