If you’re trying to decide between the iPhone 6 and Android, chances are you’ve at least taken a look at the Samsung's Galaxy S5. Both phones are among the most popular devices out there today, and for good reason.
The iPhone 6 is Apple’s slimmest, yet one of its largest phones to date. (The iPhone 6 Plus is even more massive, but it'll compete with Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 4 phablet). For the first time in two years, Apple upgraded the screen resolution and gave its smartphone a completely new design.
The Galaxy S5 is also one of Samsung’s best phones yet. It’s the first phone to come with a fingerprint sensor, and Samsung has done an excellent job at cleaning up its TouchWiz user interface while still offering all of the special features you’d find with the Galaxy S4.
So, how do they compare? Here’s a look at some of the key differences between both phones.
How They Look And Feel
One of the first things you’ll notice about the phones’ physical attributes is the difference in size. Although the iPhone 6 is a lot larger than the iPhone 5s, it’s not quite as big as the Galaxy S5. The iPhone 6 features a 4.7-inch screen, while the Galaxy S5 comes with a 5.1-inch display.
Design can be subjective, since it depends on the user’s taste in most situations. That being said, there are some general conclusions to be made based on how comfortable the phones feel and how easy they are to use.
Let’s start with the iPhone 6. Apple’s new smartphone features a unibody metal design that’s been slimmed down since the last version. It now has the same curved edges you’d find on the iPad Air, making the phone seem much more sleek than the last version. The entire back of the phone has a brushed metal look, while its predecessor featured glossy plastic strips on the top and bottom of the phone.
It’s also worth noting both phones have fingerprint sensors embedded in their home buttons. These can be used to unlock the phone and authenticate purchases. On the S5, you can use it to verify purchases through PayPal, and you can use the iPhone 6’s fingerprint scanner to authenticate iTunes purchases. Soon, you'll be able to use the iPhone 6 fingerprint sensor to authenticate payments through Apple Pay, which will let you buy stuff in stores by tapping the phone against a special reader.
There’s no doubt about it — the iPhone 6 is a beautiful phone. It’s super thin at 0.27 inches slim, while the Galaxy S5 measures about 0.31 inches thick.
I wouldn’t call the Galaxy S5 clunky, but it’s not as thin as Apple’s newest flagship. The Galaxy S5 is an improvement over the Galaxy S4, and its hard dimpled back makes it easy to grip. That being said, the iPhone 6 just feels more premium in terms of build quality. The S5’s new textured plastic back makes it less susceptible to fingerprint smudges than its predecessor, but it’s not the most attractive.
Some people might prefer the S5’s design (as I said, its subjective based on the user’s taste). But if you want one of the thinnest and lightest phones around that feels like a premium product, the iPhone 6 is your best bet.
Screen Quality
There’s also a difference in the screen resolution between phones: the iPhone 6 has a 1334 x 750 resolution screen packing 326 pixels per inch, while the Galaxy S5 has a 1920 x 1080 screen with 432 pixels per inch.
On paper, the Galaxy S5’s screen should be noticeably better than the iPhone 6’s. But in real-world testing, there didn’t seem to be too much of a difference. Both phones rendered images and video extremely sharply and crisply.
There are some discrepancies in the way each phone’s screen renders color, however. When watching the trailer for “Gone Girl” on both phones, whites looked brighter on the iPhone, while they seemed to have an ever so slight tint of yellow on the Galaxy S5.
That being said, colors appear bolder on the Galaxy S5 than the iPhone since it uses an AMOLED display instead of an LCD. The iPhone’s colors may be truer to life, but bright colors will pop a little more vibrantly when you view them on Samsung’s screen. (Note: the screens on both phones were set to the maximum brightness).
How The Cameras Stack Up
Both the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S5 have top-notch cameras, but there are some areas where one may succeed over the other. In my comparison, I noticed that the iPhone was able to capture better photos in low light. But when it came to general image quality in good lighting, both phones were able to capture clear and colorful images.
Here are some test shots I took with both phones. (Note: both cameras were set to Auto and photos were taken at the same place at the same time.)
This is a photo taken of Business Insider's Melia Robinson with the iPhone 6. The corner we're standing in is actually very dark, but you wouldn't be able to tell based on this photo.
And here's that same photo taken with the Galaxy S5. It's a bit dimmer and grainier than the photo taken with the Galaxy S5.
Battery Life
Regardless of whether you opt for the iPhone 6 or Galaxy S5, you should be able to get through a full day of work without a problem. Battery life also varies depending on how you use your phone, how many notifications you get, which apps you use, and a bunch of other variables.
I got a solid eight to nine hours of battery life out of the Galaxy S5 after moderate to heavy usage. Business Insider’s Steve Kovach reported about the same results in his review. The iPhone 6 lasted for about the same amount of time for me, but Business Insider’s Dave Smith says he usually gets about 10 hours out of his iPhone 6. So it’s really about how you use it and how your settings are configured.
The bottom line is that battery life doesn’t seem to be too different between the two.
Samsung does have two key advantages over the iPhone when it comes to battery life. The Galaxy S5 has a removeable battery, so you can swap it out with a fresh one if you're running low on juice. It also has a special "Ultra Power Saving Mode" that makes the screen black and white and only lets you use a handful of basic apps. This mode lets you squeeze a few extra hours out of your battery if you're in a jam.
Apps
App selection is one of the most important things to consider when buying a smartphone. Luckily, both Google's Play Store for Android apps and Apple's App Store each have over 1 million to choose from.
However, Android apps tend to be a little less polished than iOS apps. Developers seem to pay more attention to iOS, giving apps for iPhone the best features and design elements and first. In many cases, it feels like developers still see Android as an afterthought.
New apps and games tend to launch on iPhone first. If you like using the latest and greatest developers have to offer, you should stick with iPhone. You could be waiting months for the coolest hit app to hit the Galaxy S5.
User Interface
The user interface is probably the biggest difference between the two phones. It all comes down to your personal preference — do you like Android or iOS?
Android allows for much more customization, and Samsung has done a great job of making its software a little less clunky and more palatable for users with the Galaxy S5. But it’s still a little too cluttered for my taste.
With Android, you can add widgets to your home screen, making each home screen look entirely different from the next. iOS is much more basic — you unlock the screen and you’re immediately presented with your apps and folders. Some might call this boring (and I completely understand why), but the iPhone’s interface is simple and slick enough for anyone to be able to pick it up and use it.
Samsung’s user interface is a little more complicated, and has a lot more moving parts than iOS. That being said, you get a little more functionality out of Samsung’s software. You can open more than one app at a time and you also get access to more shortcuts by swiping down from the top of the screen than you do with the iPhone.
Conclusion
If you’re in the market for a new phone, the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S5 are excellent choices. Both phones are more than suited to take care of your everyday needs, but there are certain areas where one may succeed over the other.
If design really matters to you, go for the iPhone 6. It’s the most attractive smartphone out there (although the HTC One comes close), and it’s extremely thin and light. The aluminum design makes it feel like a really premium product. The iPhone 6 also takes better photos in low light conditions, which may be important depending on how often you use your camera for indoor photography.
The Galaxy S5 is better suited for hardcore multitaskers,and it also includes a heart rate monitor for those who need to closely monitor their health. It also has a larger screen, which is important to consider. If you use your phone for reading or watching TV shows often, you may benefit from the bigger display. If not, the iPhone 6’s sleeker design may be easier to squeeze in your pocket or use with one hand.
Xiaomi has been an up and coming competitor in the Chinese market for a few years now, and it all started with its custom version of Android simply titled MIUI. Back in the Gingerbread days MIUI was the bastion of innovation, bringing things to the table like real-time lyrics when playing music, custom lock screens, a powerful theme engine that themed the whole user interface, and whole slew of other goodies. One of the biggest simultaneous draws and drawbacks to MIUI, however, was its clear design after Apple’s own iOS, something that some Android users loved and plenty of others hated. Android is different than iOS in so many fundamental reasons it’s striking when switching back and forth between the platforms, but MIUI tries to bridge that gap by creating a sort of hybrid between the two, and Xiaomi’s latest flagship phone isn’t any different in that regard. The Mi4 is a top-end 5-inch Android phone with a super high quality built that appeals to the aesthetics of a 4th generation iPhone, but places plenty of other design elements from various Android phones into the mix as well.
Then there’s the fact that Xiaomi launched its brand new flagship phone with the same old version of MIUI that the Mi3 runs, but did something rather unique; the beta for MIUI 6 began as soon as the Mi4 came out, and while Xiaomi plans to launch the new and improved OS next month, users can try it out right now with relatively little pain. All this comes together in an incredibly unique experience that has brought me to review the Xiaomi Mi4 a little differently from other phones. This review is going to focus on the phone you’re going to get today if you ordered it, pre-packed with MIUI 5 running Android 4.4.2 KitKat, and my next review will focus on what’s changing in MIUI 6 and how that improves (or doesn’t) the shortcomings of the phone.
Specs
5-inch 1080p IPS LCD
Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHz
Adreno 330 GPU
3 GB of RAM
16 or 64GB internal storage, no microSD card support
3000 mAh Li-Po battery
Android 4.4.2 MIUI 5
13MP Sony Exmor IMX214 rear-facing camera, LED flash
8MP Sony Exmor IMX219 front-facing camera
As you can see from the specs it matches every other flagship phone out there in every single department, and even bests most with the camera sensor. There are a few phones now that feature this sensor, notably the OnePlus One and the Oppo Find 7. The battery is large for the screen size, but the physical dimensions of the phone still fall within normal range of todays’ thinnest phones. Right now the Mi4 only comes in a WDCMA variety, but an LTE version is planned to come out soon. I’m running the Mi4 on T-Mobile’s network here in the US, and it’s just as good as other non-LTE phones I’ve used in the past, but here’s the whole list of spectrums the phone supports so you can see if it works where you live:
HSPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
Display
The Mi4 features a 5-inch IPS LCD panel with great brightness levels, which results in fantastic viewability in sunlight, and extremely good viewing angles. You can literally look at the phone from the side and it’s still just as clear as viewing from the front, and you don’t get any of that weird color variation when viewing from the side that some types of displays exhibit. It’s also a 1080p display so seeing pixels is nearly impossible unless your face is right up to the display. My problem here is with the saturation levels, which are about as crazy as anything from Samsung’s AMOLED displays. Bright colors tend to have a neon glow to them, and overall the saturation levels were too high no matter what I changed in the software settings Xiaomi provides. While this gives the screen an immediate wow factor, the colors are just plain inaccurate.
Hardware and Build
What seems to be an afterthought for some phones out there was clearly the first thing Xiaomi thought of when it designed the Mi4. Right out of the box you’ll notice striking similarities to the iPhone 4/4s, and plenty of differences too. The frame around the edge of the phone is metal and feels smooth and cold to the touch. You’ll find the upper edge of the metal to be chamfered, which creates a great aesthetic to match the perfectly flush screen on the top. There are no protruding bezels here, although the back does have a very slight curve to it that you won’t see on an iPhone.
Speaking of the back the Mi4 ships with a fairly standard slippery, shiny plastic back in either black or white, but Xiaomi has made the back completely removable and are even planning on selling over a dozen different replacement backs that feature materials like leather, fabric and plenty of others too. This is a fantastic design that gives the user significantly more options in customizing their phone other than just the software.
The build quality of the phone is second to none too, and is an absolute joy to hold in the hand. The device feels incredibly solid and has a really nice weight to it; not too light, not too heavy. This weight makes it feel more substantial than some other plastic phones out there, but it’s not so heavy that you’re going to have a tired arm after being on the phone for an hour. My biggest problem with the design is that since Xiaomi is using a metal frame, which inherently has almost no friction to it, and also uses a nasty slippery back, this thing is going to fly out of your hands once the humidity drops from the summer weather. I would absolutely recommend getting a case for it until Xiaomi releases the additional backs, which is a crying shame considering how beautiful the device is.
The size of the device is phenomenal and is super easy to use with one hand. Being someone who prefers a phablet sized device normally it was actually refreshing to use the Mi4’s 5-inch screen, and since there are super minimal bezels here the device felt really good in the hand. I’ve got no problem reaching every corner of the screen and typing one-handed too.
On the front of the phone you’ll find three capacitive buttons in a very Samsung-like arrangement of menu to the left, home in the middle and back button on the right. These behave exactly as you would expect and offer no tactile response other than a vibration when pressed. The buttons on the side of the phone, however, feel fantastic and are made of the same metal that the frame is, giving a quality click when pressed. My issue here is that they are both on the same side, and on the right side of the phone no less, meaning unless you’re a left-handed individual these buttons are not comfortable to find when talking on the phone as I had to constantly thumb around for the volume rocker in a very awkward position for my thumb.
The top of the phone features a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and what looks to be an IR blaster, although there was no IR blaster software included with the phone, and 3rd party apps I tried to use didn’t do anything. The bottom of the phone features a nice, loud single speaker that’s super clear and didn’t rattle at all for me, even on max volume. Next to it is a standard USB 2.0 micro USB port for charging and interfacing with computers.
Performance and Memory
Performance here is the same as you’re going to find on any flagship nowadays. Android 4.4 KitKat is smooth as ever, and although Xiaomi has disabled the ability to switch to the faster and smoother ART runtime, the good old Dalvik works just find no matter what you’re doing outside of the usual hiccup here and there that Dalvik has always exhibited. Games all flew by at smooth framerates, and I never had a performance drop outside of Dalvik’s inability to scroll through lists smoothly.
RAM usage is pretty perfect too. On the initial setup of the phone I had a lot of weird problems with apps force closing, apps running in the background like Google Now getting killed to free up RAM, etc. All of these were solved after a factory reset, and I was extremely glad because I couldn’t imagine a phone with this much horsepower having such difficulty running modern Android. Multitasking was a breeze; jumping between apps is instant and there’s never any reloading of applications since there’s so much memory to work with. Even image heavy apps like Hangouts or Chrome never got killed, which is something to really appreciate.
The version I have comes with 16GB of internal storage, which is super small nowadays and won’t hold a whole lot, and unfortunately without microSD card support there’s no way to expand this storage at all. Thankfully Xiaomi sells a 64GB model for just $50 more, which is completely worth the price given how much more storage that is compared to the price you pay for it. On the bright side keeping SD cards out of the equation makes file management much easier, so there’s no guessing at where the picture you just took or downloaded was saved to.
Battery Life
Great overall battery life
Fantastic standby
Given that the Mi4 “only” has a 5-inch screen but still features a battery the size of most phablets, you can bet that the battery life is phenomenal. In my time of testing the best I got was nearly 5 hours of screen on time, over an hour and a half of talk time, streaming music to a bluetooth speaker for nearly 8 hours and even an hour of using my GPS via Runtastic. At the end of an 18 hour day it still had 12% battery left, and if I turned on battery saving mode this would likely have gotten me through the rest of the night if I used it conservatively. This is as good as I’ve gotten with any phone I’ve ever used, and the other days of use were similar in battery life. I’ve even got an Android Wear watch connected all day too, so that’s an extra drain given that it’s constantly syncing and using the bluetooth radio. You’re not going to get much better battery life than the Xiaomi Mi4, that’s for darned sure!
Software
Here’s where the big test comes in, as the hardware is feels phenomenal, built well and downright gorgeous too. Software really makes the experience last though, so no matter how good of hardware you’ve packed in those daily annoyances with software will ruin an otherwise perfect phone. This was where I had the biggest problem with the Mi4, but most of it is down to preference, so let’s break this down by section.
UI
The visual user interface looks like a mashup between iOS and Android, with the menus and navigation feeling much more iOS than anything. The lockscreen style depends on the theme you’re running and can vary wildly between just a slide to unlock style to one with multiple app shortcuts. All the lockscreens I tried with lockscreen music supper were super disappointing because they didn’t feature full-screen album art, and in some cases no album art of any kind. While most lockscreens you can choose in the theme engine don’t have any shortcuts to find to quickly jump into your most used apps straight from the lockscreen, there was a nice system hook for holding down the home button while on the lockscreen to toggle the flashlight. Pressing the power button will shut this off and was a very convenient way to use the flashlight when I needed it.
Lockscreen charging
Lockscreen music
Moving onto the home screen you’ll find, again, a mix between iOS and Android. There’s no app drawer here to be seen at all, so all the icons and widgets you have will be on the desktop, switching between pages to see everything you’ve got. Since this is Android you can generally choose your home launcher to be whatever you want it to be, but I found some issues. First of all I couldn’t use the Google Now Launcher at all; even when it was installed I didn’t have the option to set it as my default. Secondly you lose many of the theming abilities when not using the built-in launcher, and it felt disjointed when only having parts of the OS themed and not others.
The settings menu holds two tabs: one for quick settings like ring tones and wallpaper, and one for all settings. Dragging down the notification shade actually looks like a mix between iOS and HTC’s Sense 4 UI from years ago. It features only single line notifications under most circumstances, and has to be grabbed with two fingers and dragged down to be expanded instead of the single finger expansion Google introduced back in Android 4.3 Jellybean. This is unfortunate and downright annoying, as the change was made for good reason and there’s no good reason to go back to it. I did like Xiaomi’s version of quick toggles though, as you can swipe left and right on the notification drawer at any time to go between quick toggles and notifications, and on top of that Xiaomi is using a much more Google style of quick toggle than Samsung or LG, for example. This means the quick toggles actually give you information instead of just being quick buttons, so it’ll tell you things like what WiFi connection you’re currently on, mobile network, etc.
Notifications
Quick Toggles
Customize Quick Toggles
There are also a number of very sensible placements through the UI, things like clicking the clock in the notification bar takes you to the Clock app, or clicking the date takes you to Calendar. Holding down long press even gives you a quick button to clear all apps, something not done on most Android phones. Speaking of multi-tasking, the interface is interesting but ultimately archaic and takes us back to the Gingerbread days. Long pressing on home brings up open apps, listed in a horizontal row of icons paginated with 4 icons per page. This makes it truly difficult to quickly multitask because you not only have to hold down the home button for 2 seconds to get to this interface, but you also need to remember what the app’s icon looks like with the theme you’re using. On the positive side swiping down actually locks the app into memory, which is something unique that I’ve never seen before on a phone, which was cool especially if you’ve got a bunch of apps open and want to prioritize what gets closed and what doesn’t. Swiping up kills the app, but again without an actual preview of the way the app last looked it’s annoying to figure out what needs to be closed.
Themes
Categories
Applying
Theme
You can change pretty much every aspect of the UI through MIUI’s powerful theme engine, and if MIUI has innovated in any way in particular it’s with the theme engine. There’s only one other phone on the market not made by Xiaomi that can do this too, the OnePlus One, but since that’s CyanogenMod it’s handled very differently. MIUI uses its own theme store that categorizes themes by paid and free, popular and new, and even in themes like nature, cars, etc. From there if you like only parts of the theme you are using but would like to change others, like the icons for example, you can go into the specific components section of the theme manager and change practically any individual part of the UI. It’s powerful and unique, and being a community driven marketplace there are plenty of themes added and updated all the time, although you’ll find that the best ones are likely ones you have to pay for.
Sort of related to themes is the store for all sorts of media that Xiaomi provides. In addition to themes Xiaomi provides a ton of different wallpapers and sounds that rival even that of Zedge or another big app that provides similar content. There’s plenty of both free and paid versions of everything, and I didn’t find that the quality of the free ringtones or alarm sounds were any better or worse than the paid ones. The biggest obstacle for me here was down to a language barrier, as even though I have my system language set to English much of the store is in Chinese, but it’s possible to navigate the store if you just take your time and look around at the icons and other visual cues.
Xiaomi Apps
Every non-Nexus phone always comes with its manufacturer’s own set of unique apps that add features to the phone, and the Mi4 is no different. MIUI has its own set of apps like sound recorder, compass, FM Radio and others, and they are all included here too. Xiaomi has added a number of little tactile feedback hints throughout the UI that just make the phone feel really good when using it. There’s something oddly satisfying about the phone vibrating lightly when it ticks through the minutes on the analog clock, or that very distinct clicking vibration when adjusting when your alarm is going to go off. There are also other simple things like swiping through text in the notes app to cross through the text or to undo that action.
In some apps when you long press to edit text there’s a large magnifying glass that pops up to give you a better close-up view of where you’re dragging, and I found highlighting text to be a little more responsive on the Mi4 than on many other Android phones I’ve used. There are also some Xiaomi apps that support pop-up windows, such as the notes or messaging apps, which help with multitasking while using features that often require you to switch back and forth between apps. It’s not quite as well done as the pen-window feature on the Galaxy Note series, for example, but it’s better than most other phones because this sort of thing just isn’t usually offered out of the box.
Security and Data Management
China’s network topology is a unique one, and like many countries in Europe or Asia the cost of data is very high. Because of this MIUI features some incredible data management that lets you not only set a monthly limit for data and give you alerts when you’ve used a certain percentage, but it also lets you fine tune these settings per app. In the data management app you can select whether specific apps are allowed to use WiFi, Cell Data, both or neither at all, which really helps when you have an app that likes to go rogue and eat up data. By default the data management is a little overly aggressive though, and I found myself needing toturn it off altogether because I couldn’t even download apps from the Play Store on WiFi.
Security is second to none here, and I was incredibly impressed with the app permissions management in the system. While the Play Store lets you know what apps are allowed to do when you install them, I’d wager that most people don’t even read these permissions when they download them. In MIUI when an app asks to access data outside of itself the OS asks you whether or not it’s OK, and gives you the option to always allow this action if you trust it for that particular app. This prevents apps from getting ahold of data you might otherwise not want them to, like reading your contacts list or GPS position. This was refreshing to see on a phone right out of the box, and a great alternative to something like permissions management found in CyanogenMod since it automatically asks you rather than you having to dig around and find the setting.
Cloud storage is a big thing for phones anymore, and Xiaomi’s cloud offerings might just be the best and most coherent set I’ve ever seen. More than just data syncing data and backing up photos, MiCloud gives each user 10GB of free storage to store contacts, call logs, messages, photos, browsing data, music and more. There are a ton of other system apps including DouKan Reader that sync your eBooks and the like as well, and the messaging app actually works over the cloud too by pairing your SIM card with the service, allowing you to use the MiCloud web interface to interface with your phone and send messages too. It’s a fantastic service that rivals all others.
Phone Calls and Network
Phone calls were as good as they come, especially in HD voice. The clarity of the audio that comes out of the speaker is absolutely top notch, and like any good HD voice call it felt like the person was right next to me rather than talking to me on a phone. The speakerphone is fantastic too, and provides a much louder and clear experience than I am used to on most phones. Having the main speaker on the bottom of the home helps with acoustics too.
Network speed was also about what you would expect from a non-LTE phone. T-Mobile has arguably the best HSPA network in the US given that they were the only ones that took the tech seriously before their LTE rollout, and it shows even in congested areas. The best I could pull down with the network was around 12mbps down and 1.5mbps up, which is really more than enough for most mobile content.
Sound
While cameras always get the biggest showcase in most reviews, music playback is likely something that most users will use more often than anything else on their phone. I’m happy to say the music playback on the Mi4 is nothing less than excellent, but it’s still not quite the best I’ve ever heard from a phone. Even still it bests most phones, if for no other reason than the powerful equalizer and heaphone optimization that Xiaomi uses in the OS. When you plug in headphones you are prompted to customize your listening experience, which will take you to the equalizer section of the music app and lets you not only choose from preset equalizers, but also create your own and save them, as well as select what type of headphones you use. You can choose from generic earbud or in-ear headphones, as well as various Xiaomi branded ones to adjust the music to better fit those speakers. Definitely don’t turn this setting on if you aren’t using what’s listed though, as it does all sorts of funky things to the music when listened to through a car system, for instance.
Camera
Video
The Xiaomi Mi4 doesn’t have OIS, so while it’s got a disadvantage in the video category right out of the box when compared to an LG G3 or something, most phones don’t have hardware stabilization, so odds are you won’t notice the difference if you haven’t used a phone with OIS before. Xiaomi has taken full advantage of the Sony Exmor IMX214 sensor that’s behind the lens by giving extra options like HDR video and super slow-mo video. Time-lapse video is also present, and gives you the ability to change it from 1-second per shot all the way to 60 seconds per shot. You’re going to need a tripod or something else to hold the phone still to actually use this feature though, so I won’t spend anymore time on it. Slow-mo video is pretty standard fare nowadays, providing up to 120FPS at 720P resolution, and competes with the best of the slow-mo phones out there at the same resolution and speed. There’s unfortunately no way to choose framerate though, just normal, slow or fast, so you don’t necessarily know what you’re getting into before you hit start.
HDR video is flat out amazing looking, and provides an excellent way to record video in bright conditions with lots of shadows and contrasting lighting conditions. It’s also good indoors but with lots of light, so during the day is fine, but the noise ramps up exponentially as light sources decrease. Noise in auto mode is much better in low light situations, and actually seems to be reduced with 4K video over the lesser options. Speaking of 4K recording, you can even record HDR video in 4K, meaning quality is never a problem, just choosing the best mode based on the light at hand. Audio recording was less than stellar though, and often I’d hear what sounded like wind blowing into the mic interrupting whatever sounds are supposed to be there. Hopefully this can just be fixed with a software update.
HONG KONG: When Apple's latest iPhones went on sale this month in Hong Kong, Singapore and New York, among the hip urbanites and tech-obsessed was another group clamoring for the devices: Chinese scalpers looking to make a premium by flipping the phones to smugglers.
But the grey market for the new iPhones has already dried up, even though they will not officially go on sale in China for a few weeks, at the earliest.
Wholesalers who helped orchestrate the smuggling of tens of thousands of the phones into the country are now slashing prices to move inventory. At an electronics market in central Beijing, one retailer was recently selling the low-end iPhone 6 and 6 Plus for 6,500 renminbi to 8,800 renminbi ($1,060 to $1,436), down from 12,000 renminbi to 15,000 renminbi ($1,960 to $2,450) just after the release.
"Stocks of the iPhone 6 are way too high right now," said one wholesaler of smuggled iPhones in Beijing's northwestern tech hub Zhongguancun.
The smugglers' experience represents the new reality for Apple in China.
Four years ago, the iPhone 4 was a status symbol, with the black market booming before the product was officially introduced. Today, the iPhone is simply one option among many, as local companies like Xiaomi and Meizu Technology rival Apple in terms of coolness while charging less than half the price.
The primary route the iPhones have taken into China is via Hong Kong, according to the wholesaler, who declined to be identified because of the illegality of some parts of the operations.
Scalpers organize Hong Kong customers with local identity cards to preorder phones that the scalpers then collect outside the store, paying about $325 extra per phone. The phones are then smuggled to wholesalers in the southern Chinese city of Guangdong, across the border from Hong Kong, and from there are shipped to cities across China.
When the prices were high, early last week, the wholesaler said he was making more than $163 per sale. But his profit margins have dissolved as prices have fallen.
But the grey market for the new iPhones has already dried up, even though they will not officially go on sale in China for a few weeks.
"This year, the scalpers' losses will be big," he said.
China represents a major, fast-growing market for Apple, which competes with Samsung for control of the high-end smartphone segment. In January, Apple brokered a long-delayed deal with the country's largest telecom company, China Mobile, which has helped bolster sales. The largest smartphone market in the world, China accounted for 15.9 percent of Apple's revenue in the last quarter.
The new models will help Apple solidify its position in the country. In China there are about 50 million iPhone users, according to Kitty Fok, a managing director of the research firm IDC. She estimates that the company will sell about 4 million phones a month as customers swap their old iPhones for the new ones.
But both Apple and Samsung face stiff competition from local brands, which have been offering cheaper phones with high-end features. As Samsung's sales slipped this year, the company was replaced by Xiaomi as the country's largest smartphone maker, according to the market research firm Canalys.
"The local players aren't only playing the price game," Fok said. "They have products that cater to the local market, big screen sizes, optimized connectivity for China and dual SIM cards."
The Chinese government is not making things any easier. An intensifying crackdown on corruption in the country has led officials, who in the past were known to spend big on luxury products like iPhones, to tamp down on lavish purchases.
The government has also signaled that it would take measures to curb government reliance on electronics made by foreign companies after disclosures by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden about U.S. government surveillance. In a statement issued this month, Apple's chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said the company had never cooperated with the government of any country to provide access to customer data.
At a conference this month, Wei Jianguo, director general of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said the Shanghai government had told its employees to use Huawei phones instead of phones produced by Apple or Samsung, according to a transcript posted on the news portal Sohu, one of the sponsors of the event.
Three government officials in Shanghai and Beijing said they had not heard about any formal notice to stop using foreign phones and said many in their departments still used iPhones. One of the officials in Beijing, however, said that people in his office refrained from bringing in Apple computers or iPads, because they are a more conspicuous display of wealth.
Out of the gate, Apple is already a step behind with the iPhone 6. Last year, the company released the latest model in China at the same time it did in the United States, Japan and parts of Europe. This year, the release has been delayed as Apple awaits government approval, an often slow and unpredictable process.
The iPhone 6 is likely to get the final license before China's National Day celebrations Wednesday, according to a person with knowledge of the plans who works for one of China's state-owned telecom providers. If that happens, the new models will most likely begin selling in China a few weeks later.
The delay gives the smugglers a bit more time to get rid of their stock.
The recent scene at the electronics market in Beijing - a multistory mall crowded with stalls of vendors selling everything from calculators and hard drives to surveillance cameras and smartphones - was not encouraging. Only a few customers browsed in the narrow walkways.
No stalls openly displayed the new iPhones. On request, the vendors could procure the devices from a wholesaler. One vendor said the market for the phones was far worse than in past years but said he hoped a new crackdown on smuggling by customs officers would help push their price back up.
In recent days, Hong Kong's marine police have played a cat-and-mouse game with smugglers who use speedboats to take iPhones into China. On Thursday night, the police ran off several men in a mangrove swamp loading boxes of iPhones into a flat wooden boat that would ferry them out to a nearby speedboat. They seized 286 iPhones, according to a statement from Hong Kong customs. In other instances, customs has found hundreds of phones concealed in the axles of trucks and in hidden compartments in cars.
A report from China's state-run Xinhua news service said the government would auction off 2,000 iPhone 6s it had seized in the southern city of Shenzhen.
The vendor at the electronics market said that one way smugglers skirted the stricter enforcement was to walk the phones across the border two at a time. Usually those crossing the border take the phones out of the packaging to convince customs officials that the phones are their own, he said.
Tearing off the plastic on what appeared to be an unopened iPhone 6, he showed how the screen was already dotted with the fingerprints of whoever brought it into China.
"Right now at our market you won't find a phone that is actually in its original packaging," he said.
