JontOlof

Hands-on iPhone6 and iPhone 6 Plus

Hands-on iPhone6 and iPhone 6 Plus

I’ve had my first hands-on experience with the new iPhone6 and iPhone6 plus. I am one of those iPhone developers and users who defended the small form factor. The iPhone 6 Plus is humongous. Far to big for my preference. The iPhone 6 is a lot better for my taste, the size is more moderate and you still benefit from a larger screen real estate. Speaking of which. Currently the interfaces of most apps will only be scaled up versions of the smaller display. Admittedly, Apple has pushed the need for size agnostic interfaces very hard lately, and especially during and since WWDC this year. It will take some getting used to, both for developers and interaction designers, to fully take the different form factors into account when designing the user interfaces of their apps. And the question is how big a difference you will see in the end? Will the difference between an iPhone5S GUI and the iPhone6 dito be the presentation of thumbnails in a tableView? Apple has created a neat interface creation workflow with XCode6 and iOS8. But with it enters the same kind of GUI design issues seen on Android and the work load to adopt specific designs for every device will undoubtedly increase from now on.

The iPhone6 Plus has the interesting feature of sporting iPad-interface while in landscape. I think I’d like to see this interface option in the iPhone6 as well, but being more of a “large phone” rather than a phablet, and for technical reasons (like screen resolution), I doubt we will see that kind of adoption for the iPhone6. The developers take on the new GUI guide lines will eventually tell…

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