In this review, we will tell you what LTE is in iPhone, what features characterize the standard, and talk about the details of managing the service in smartphones of this brand. The article will be useful to owners of modern smartphones who want to get the most out of their use.
So, what is LTE on iPhone? This is the fourth communication standard, the most modern one currently existing. Wireless data transfer has improved communication quality and has the following theoretical speed:
- 300 Mbit download;
- 170 Mbit upload.
The practical data are:
- 100 Mbit/sec. while loading;
- 50 Mbit/sec. upon recoil.
The peculiarity of the work is the use of existing networks as infrastructure and easy switching to outdated standards (if it is impossible to connect a new one) without loss of signal.
The module in the smartphone provides the following advantages:
- Excellent data transfer speed;
- Improved connection quality;
- Creation of a unified network;
- Cost reduction;
- Improve video quality.
Now you know what the abbreviation means. The first models with communication support appeared in the Russian Federation in 2013 - they worked only in Moscow. And now its widespread use allows the technology to be used in almost all cities of the country.
We have explained in detail what it is - LTE communication, let's talk about support for the standard by different generations of mobile devices.
When did it appear and what was it like?
Today not everyone will remember what year the iPhone 6 came out. It arrived in stores in September 2014. Users immediately noted that the device was very well designed. Its back panel is made of a metal plate that clearly curves on the sides. There are only a few seams throughout the entire device. There are no ugly extra details. The only real drawback is the antenna design. Apple developers decided to line the top and bottom of the back of the phone with small plastic strips through which wireless radios can transmit signals. According to user reviews, it doesn't look too good, as if someone had drawn stripes on the phone with a marker.
When the iPhone 6 came out, many noted that this smartphone was much larger than the 5S or other iPhones that were available before it. It was even larger than some of the 4.7-inch phones that were coming out at the same time.
These dimensions were explained by the fact that the company refused to replace the top and bottom panels so as not to interfere with the large Home button. However, the device still fit in one hand and was quite comfortable.
How to determine your iPhone model
Where are iPhones made - who designs and makes them
Deciphering the iPhone model usually does not take much time, since there are several simple ways to understand which smartphone is in your hands. You can determine the models of all iPhones in order through the phone settings, as well as by finding out the code on the back of the cover.
For example, by turning the iPhone 7, you can see a numeric value at the bottom of the panel. A certain inscription is indicated there, for example, model A1429, where the numerical value is the smartphone code. You can enter it into a search engine and find out your model in a few minutes. However, this method does not work on all iPhones. On newer phones, nothing is written on the back panel anymore. In this case, iTunes and the account associated with it are used. This is a fairly accurate and fast method. Sequence of actions: connect the smartphone to the PC and launch iTunes. After the device is detected, you need to click on the iPhone icon to go to the settings. As a result, a page with the gadget model, serial number and other information will open.
At the moment, Apple has managed to show about 20 successful smartphone models. During their existence, these gadgets have become recognizable all over the world. Thanks to innovative technologies, each model surprises with its functions and impeccability.
What are the screen features?
The screen, of course, is one of the main positive features of the iPhone 6. Its diagonal is 4.7 inches: 1334 pixels high and 750 wide. It has excellent color reproduction and phenomenal viewing angles. It can be viewed even in bright light thanks to the new polarizer. Your eyes will not be able to distinguish individual pixels anywhere. The glass on the front slopes very gently into the curved metal edge, giving the iPhone 6 a sort of infinity pool effect: the screen never seems to end.
According to users, the screen control is surprisingly soft and smooth. There is a feeling that images and icons are literally controlled with your fingers.
However, the world famous company couldn't figure out a way to take advantage of the new screen or make navigation easier. Other devices from the brand have smart lock screen mechanisms, styluses, split-screen multitasking, or always-on voice control. The iPhone 6 allows you to access Siri, but only when it is in active mode.
iPhone 6 battery
The non-removable battery capacity of the iPhone 6 is 1810 mAh (versus 1560 mAh in the iPhone 5S) at a voltage of 3.82 V. By the way, the model with the “Plus” prefix is equipped with a battery with a capacity of 2915 mAh. What a scope! However, according to the manufacturer, a simple six is capable of working for 250 hours in standby mode, 11 hours when playing video (which one is not specified), and also continuously play music for 50 hours.
I have not yet noticed a significant difference in performance between the “Pyaeska” and the sixth iPhone. One day with moderately intensive use is the ceiling for the hero of our review. The main thing is that it doesn't get worse. And it didn't get any worse.
What other innovations were noted?
When the iPhone 6 came out, reviews immediately noted the advantages of the built-in NFC, which allows you to use the ready-made Apple Pay system. In addition, the smartphone has support for faster LTE and Voice over LTE, plus new Wi-Fi standards. The bottom-mounted speaker is louder and brighter than on the 5S. These improvements don't seem significant individually, but together they make iPhone more reliable and comfortable. According to user reviews, iPhone 6 cannot be called a revolutionary model, but it is quite a luxury smartphone.
However, there is one feature that makes the iPhone 6 stand out from other devices released at the same time. This is a camera. It shoots 8-megapixel images, but - unlike previous iPhones - it does so with a new sensor. It also contains functionality that Apple representatives call “focus pixels.” It is used to achieve phase detection autofocus. In practice, it looks like this: if you move the phone while shooting, no time is wasted on refocusing, but the photos are clear and high-quality. Some manual controls are available, including exposure lock.
The iPhone 6 now takes higher-resolution panoramic photos. Overall, the pictures come out better than any smartphone released in the same year. When shooting video, this model also leads compared to its contemporaries. You can shoot 1080p videos at 60-240fps.
Videos look better thanks to the new “cinematic stabilization”, which does a great job of shaky hands. You can shoot while walking or extending your hand out of a window - the video will still be smooth and shake-free.
Why is it not easy to find settings for switching from LTE to 3G and back?
The thing is that the wards of Steve Jobs, who, unfortunately, is no longer with us, automate the functions of devices as much as possible, leaving users with a small part of manual settings. On the one hand, this frees iPhone users from having to configure anything themselves. The iPhone works without additional “tutelage”.
But on the other hand, the lack of settings in unforeseen cases can limit the capabilities of the iPhone. Or even make it a useless “toy”.
Hardware properties
At one time, Apple amazed everyone when it demonstrated the A7 processor on the iPhone 5S. The dual-core 64-bit component destroyed the competition of quad- and eight-core processors. The 5S still ran great on iOS 8, showing that the A7 was indeed a powerful performer.
When the iPhone 6 went on sale, users discovered that it was equipped with an even more modern A8 processor. However, looking at the specifications alone, it didn't look like performance had increased much.
The A8 is a dual-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz, which is slightly faster than the A7's 1.3GHz. Imagination's PowerVR GPU is also quad-core like the previous iteration, rather than hexa-core (that's six cores) as some have reported.
Despite this, Apple has managed to improve performance significantly. This means that the iPhone 6 is very fast.
Users note that Touch ID, a fingerprint recognition function, works noticeably faster when unlocking the phone. Scrolling through menus and opening apps is as easy as ever. Mobile game lovers immediately enjoyed playing the latest 3D games with all the extra graphical effects on the big screen.
The only issue that users encountered in terms of performance was related to certain applications. The Facebook service, for example, often produced errors when used.
In addition to tracking the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass, the M8 coprocessor takes care of a new sensor - the barometer. The iPhone 6 can measure height. This means it knows when you're walking up the stairs and can provide that information to fitness tracking apps.
According to user reviews, the iPhone 6 hardware is good, but there is little that is truly new. It's simply distilling a lot of existing ideas into a much nicer package.
Packaging and equipment
As always, the product of the Californian corporation was packaged in a neat paper box made of thick cardboard, consisting of two parts. However, this time Apple clearly did something too clever. There is no beautiful and bright printing on the packaging. Instead, there is a raised copy of the front of the device. For what? Why? For what?! I don't know.
We captured the unpacking process on video, so I suggest you take a look at this action below:
In addition to the smartphone itself, the box contained a standard USB Lightning cable, a 1-amp charger, and the usual EarPods with playback control buttons on the wire. Of course, there were also all sorts of pieces of paper with, so to speak, parting words from the developers and traditional stickers. There is nothing more, and we didn’t expect anything more.
Storage devices
One of the features of the iPhone that many consider to be a disadvantage is the lack of microSD card slots. The iPhone 6 is no different: if you need extra storage for music, apps, photos and movies, you'll have to pay for it up front. It is also worth noting that this smartphone model does not have a version with 32 GB of memory.
At the end of September 2014, when the iPhone 6 went on sale in Russia, the 16 GB version cost 32 thousand rubles, the 64 GB version cost 42 thousand rubles. In fact, it ended up being cheaper than the 5s when it first hit the market.
operating system
In 2013, iOS 7 was truly innovative. The platform had a new look and functions. Ideas were emerging about how consumers would use smartphones. Many of them were great, some were not so successful. So, the whole OS looked a little chaotic. When the iPhone 6 went on sale in 2014, Apple introduced iOS 8 as an improvement on the previous system.
The new OS was focused on making common actions simple and accessible. The keyboard has predictive typing, guessing (often accurately, but sometimes not so well) what you're about to write. This is really convenient, especially for those who cannot type sentences at high speed.
There are faster ways to respond to text messages, and at the top of the multitasking menu is a list of people you've recently contacted. There are settings throughout the OS that make everything faster. You can remove yourself from annoying group chats, send quick audio messages (voicemail is back), and save documents much easier with iCloud Drive.
Background of the issue
As an introduction, I propose to think about the iPhone 6 not as a smartphone, but as a phenomenon that, one way or another, if it hasn’t stirred up the market, will definitely do so. Let's start from the end. Now in many Apple Stores around the world, the delivery time for new items is 3-4 weeks, both for the younger model and for the older one with the Plus prefix. It is impossible to make a purchase and receive a gadget today, even though insiders reported that Apple has occupied almost all cargo airlines for delivering batches of new smartphones to its warehouses in Europe, Asia and America. It is also very difficult to go to any Apple Store abroad and buy an iPhone 6 there. I’m generally silent about the older version. I felt all the sadness of the situation from my own experience when I was present at the start of sales in Berlin. I’ll talk about this in a separate article.
Let's rewind time. 24 hours after the start of online pre-orders, Apple reported that they managed to “sell” a record number of smartphones to pre-orders only. This time it was reported that 4 million people booked new handsets in the first 24 hours. Considering that the company’s servers went down for a short time, you can trust this information.
Further into the past. After the end of the presentation, the Internet was filled with jokes and demotivators about the unsuccessful broadcast of the last event, laughter from the camp of Android OS fans over the backward characteristics of the iPhone 6 Plus and especially the iPhone 6. Almost all the major players did not miss the moment. Some showed off with advertising banners on the Internet, others mocked the company’s slogans on Twitter, and Samsung, as always, distinguished itself the most. The Koreans released a whole series of strange videos where they openly grinned at the company from Cupertino.
Looking at all this leapfrog, I remember one passage from the famous fable by I.A. Krylov: “And Vaska listens and eats.” While everyone is arguing, swearing and wasting advertising budgets, Apple is rubbing its hands in anticipation of the next super-profit. Even black PR is also PR. And while everyone tried to speak out, even those who had nothing much to say, the iPhone 6 went from the most anticipated to the most talked about smartphone of this year.
I deliberately carried out such a reverse chronology of events. Knowing the situation in the present, it is fun to rethink everything that happened in the past. Many desperately tried to somehow denigrate yet another “Apple” creation, but it turned out exactly the opposite. The iPhone 6 is out of stock and Chinese factories are working at full capacity to meet record demand. However, despite the general euphoria, negative aspects are really present, so I can’t wait to talk about them, so let’s return to our smartphone.
New search
Many users have been blown away by Spotlight, which now includes App Store, local and other search results as you type. For most, this has become the best way to find something. This option is much faster than opening Safari or dealing with Siri.
iOS adapts well—though not perfectly—to the iPhone 6's larger display. Several Apple apps have been updated to new resolutions, allowing more data to be shown on the screen at once. Most third-party services simply scale, so you get slightly larger text and images.
However, when iPhone 6 came out, many of the new features of iOS 8 were not available. Continuity, which lets you move calls and texts between devices, couldn't be tested. Also unavailable was the handy handover feature that lets you pick up right where you left off on another device.
Procedure for switching from LTE to 3G for iPhone
Let's look at how to manually switch an iPhone from LTE to 3G so that it stops slowing down due to inexplicable problems on the part of the cellular operator. On the main screen of the iPhone, tap on the “Settings” tab (Fig. 2).
Rice. 2. The “Settings” shortcut on the main iPhone screen.
Next, in Settings, select the menu item “Cellular Communications” (Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. Line for launching the “Cellular” settings in the iPhone Settings menu.
In the “Cellular Communications” window that opens, tap on the “Data Options” setting (Fig. 4).
Rice. 4. The line “Data settings” in the list of “Cellular” settings.
Next, in the window that opens, select the “Voice and data” option (Fig. 5).
Rice. 5. Select the “Voice and Data” option to go directly to the settings for the LTE or 3G Internet connection method.
Now, finally, in the “Voice and Data” settings window, we must manually select one or another Internet connection mode. If we need to limit the speed of the Internet connection to 3G, preventing the iPhone from connecting to LTE networks even when they exist, we select and tap on the 3G line (Fig. 6).
By setting this mode, we are, as it were, “telling” our iPhone: work only in 3G mode, when 3G is turned off, automatically switch to 2G; but “up” to LTE - in no case, even if there is an LTE signal!
Rice. 6. Limiting the iPhone's Internet connection to the 3G standard, even if the cellular operator offers a higher-speed LTE connection option.
