Low Light Express

I must say I was expecting way thick from the iPhone 6 camera. The day I got my 6 Plus I took it to Pavilion to do some testing. Not in daylight but right after sunset. I really wanted to know how good it was.

There were plenty of people and more than enough subject keep me going. The lantern show was still on, and mixed with the lights at the fountain, it was quite a spectacle.

I got snapping straight away, alternating between the iPhone and the GR. The results? It was better than I expected. And the main reason was the optical image stabiliser. The shots looked crisp and the noise level was more than just acceptable. Not as good as the GR, but certainly no slouch.

Would it replace the GR in my pocket? Unlikely. Was it any better than the 5S. I wager to say that, it was not as big a jump between the 4 and the 4S. The main reason why the shots were successful was the image stabilisation system. You'd never be able to get the same shot on the 5S due the low shutter speed.

The image on the 6 Plus also appeared less contrasty as compared to the 5S. It was certainly easily rectified with apps such as Camera+. Otherwise the camera retained the 8MP sensor size, but I was sure much of the update happened under the hood at the software level.

Shooting speed was reasonable although the bigger size of the phone felt cluncky in my hands. If felt too big for me to position the shots freely, unlike the older iPhone or even my GR.

All in all, the iPhone 6 Plus still carried the reasonably good camera and with the addition of some software magic, the output still was among the best compared to other phones. I felt it better than the Oppo. From what I heard, the Lumia was still the King, and this latest Apple offering did little to knock the Windows phone off its perch.

The Announcement

So, the alarm went off at 1 am, and I straight away jumped off the bed, hit the desktop and started opening the stream. Apple got their big announcement eh!

But the streaming connection was awful. I thought maybe it was the network. Got upstairs, flipped open my iPad and tried both wifi and LTE. Still the streaming was bad, and often connection stopped. On a couple of occasions, I got kicked out of Safari on the iPad.

And one more thing ....

Obviously too many people tuned in, and Apple just couldn't cope with that amount of people on at the same time.

Luckily the stream became steady just at the time Tim Cook announced the iPhone 6 - and obviously the 6 plus. Verdict? Definitely going to get one.

And then, the talk was about the Apple Pay, which I doubt going to hit our shores any time soon. I thought that was the end of that.

And then came the classic "one more thing" moment, a la Steve Jobs.

It was clear that Apple had invested great effort in their new class of products. As when the iPad was initially announced, there was a lot of skepticism. But the products needed to be experienced before one could make any conclusions. It looked promising, but judging from other wearables I have seen so far, it would require a leap of faith. And if any company were to implement such a thing, it could only be Apple.

It looked like I would be putting in an order for both the 6 plus and Apple Watch soon ....

And now, it was time to catch some sleep .... Good morning ....