The new iPhones for journalists: Improvements and disappointments
Marc Settle
specialises in smartphone reporting for the BBC Academy
The new iPhones are bigger and thinner
The iPhone 6 and its bigger brother the 6 Plus will run on iOS 8, which I've reviewed elsewhere. Now they’ve both been unveiled we know the hardware which will take advantage of the new iOS.
It’s also a matter of judgement as to which improvements benefit journalists specifically. For example, the faster processors in the new devices get tasks done quicker, which will obviously help journalists and others too.
'Bigger, better, faster' would seem to be the underlying principle for every new smartphone produced these days. But the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus go against the grain somewhat, at least when it comes to the specifications found in the camera. That remains at 8 megapixels: the same as in the iPhone 4s which came out way back in 2011. Rival 'big beast' smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Experia Z3 have 16mpx and 20.7mpx respectively.
Apple would counter that the improved technology behind the lens will lead to better photos despite the lack of extra megapixels. Additionally, with so many photos and videos being viewed online via social media on smartphones, millions of megapixels could be seen as unnecessary anyway.
Getting a photo in focus should always be a journalist’s aim and Apple claims that the new phones can help with that thanks to what’s called 'phase detection autofocus'. It’s said to eliminate the annoying 'in-and-out' wobble you sometimes get when a lens has to search what it can see before locking focus. It’s a feature mainly found on high-spec digital cameras and DSLRs and, according to Apple, the iPhone 6 models can focus twice as fast as their predecessors. The acid test of this claim will come when reviewers get their hands on the devices in the next few weeks and put them through their paces.
Journalists might also benefit from another newly introduced function hitherto typically only found on larger cameras and some Nokia Lumia smartphones: optical image stabilisation. OIS should lead to better photos in low light as it’s a feature which compensates for camera shake when longer exposures are necessary. OIS will only be found on the larger and more expensive iPhone 6 Plus: the iPhone 6 only has digital image stabilisation, which is not quite as effective.
The video camera can now capture 'high dynamic range' (HDR) footage which should produce better pictures when the scene contains big contrasts of light and shade. It can also shoot 1080p video at 60 frames per second - up from 30fps previously. However - and this is a big however - the default video camera still can’t be adjusted to capture at 25fps, which is the preferred frame rate for broadcasts in the UK. This means that the advice to journalists will continue to be to use third-party apps which can record at 25fps.
Staying with fps, video can now be captured at a maximum of 240fps (versus 120fps), which means slow motion will be v-e-r-r-r-r-r-r-y slow on playback.
One word of warning to anyone buying an iPhone 6 with capacity of 16GB: footage shot at 240fps will get very large very quickly - hundreds of megabytes for each minute - which means the device will fill up rather quickly. The advice would be to record, share and then delete the footage as soon as possible.
One of my bugbears about video hasn’t been addressed in the new phones. Footage can still be recorded vertically, which looks awful when played on televisions or computer monitors. On this at least the BBC is ahead of Apple: our internal newsgathering app, PNG, has a built-in restriction which means the video camera won’t record if it’s held in an orientation other than horizontal.
The popularity of the 'selfie' has made front-facing cameras more important. Journalists would rarely take a selfie for work purposes. But the front-facing camera is often used for a 'piece to camera' and an improved front camera could lead to better-looking footage. Apple is boasting that the front-facing camera now captures 81% more light than before, so expect PTCs to be 81% better too.
One aspect I've not seen addressed in any review, but which is vital to journalists, is the quality of the in-built microphones. Good quality sound will make a video much more watchable, and is obviously crucial for radio. It's worth noting that other smartphones' mics performed better than the iPhone 5 in the considered opinion of experts such as Neal Augenstein. He uses an iPhone exclusively for his reporting at WTOP in Washington DC and tested the microphone in the iPhone 5 against the Samsung S5 and the Amazon Fire - and Apple lost both those battles.
The new iPhones keep the mics in the same locations as before, but assessing whether they sound better will have to wait for a hands-on test. Watch - or rather 'listen to”' - this space.
Apple had long held out against joining the growing trend for ever-larger devices. Indeed, one of the promotional ads for the iPhone 5 in 2012 focused on the “dazzling display of common sense”, which implied its size was ideal for the average hand.
But now it has produced two devices firmly in the 'phablet' category, at 4.7 and 5.5 inches. Rivals such as HTC which have long offered phablets lost no time in mocking Apple playing catch-up.
The larger devices tout bigger and better batteries: inevitable, as a larger body has space for a larger battery, but also necessary as a larger screen needs more power to run it. A longer-lasting battery will come as a welcome relief for anyone who is down to vapours by the end of the working day, while for journalists the increased dimensions should make tasks such as editing footage or writing scripts easier. The larger screen has also led to a few tweaks to the keyboard, with extra keys such as dedicated buttons for copying and pasting.
iOS developers are also going to be busy in the next few weeks ensuring their apps are ready to take advantage of the new opportunities afforded by both iOS 8 and these bigger iPhones.
It’s not my place to recommend either of the new iPhones in preference to other manufacturers’ devices. Apple has certainly added a large number of bells and whistles to its flagship models, but it has not gone unnoticed that rival smartphones have had many of these features for some time - and often for a lot less money.
Image from a tweet by @ronamadeo - http://t.co/NrwbqHMVL4
The price of the largest capacity iPhone 6 Plus may be prohibitive for many: £789 for 128GB. Even so, Apple will sell millions of both of its new devices. Equally certain is that its developers and technicians are already working busily on the iPhone 7.
In previous blog posts Marc Settle looked at iOS 8's location and messaging features and its camera and editing features.
