iPhone 6 Plus: best phablet, may appeal more than the 6 if you don't mind two-handed usage
The iPhone 6 Plus Mini-Review: Apple's First Phablet — While we've also written about the iPhone 6, the iPhone 6 Plus needs its own review in order to really understand the various features …
Context & Ripple Effects
AnandTech's full review arrives three weeks after the iPhone 6 Plus hands-on, which had already flagged that Apple's first phablet is 'large enough to potentially rival the iPad mini.' The verdict now settles the question the September 9 event left open: reviewers name it the best phablet available, with the caveat that it only beats its smaller sibling for users who accept two-handed use.
The timing matters beyond the review score. Pre-orders open in China on October 10 and the phones go on sale there October 17, so the assessment lands just before Apple's largest untapped market for big screens opens. Meanwhile Apple's iPad business posted declining shipments this year, and the company is reportedly responding with a gold 9.7-inch model and a rumored 12.9-inch iPad next year — a product line already under pressure from the phone Apple just made bigger.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between the two new iPhones face a real fork rather than a size footnote: the 6 Plus wins on display, battery, and camera per reviewers, but only for people whose usage tolerates two-handed operation — a segmentation Apple has never offered within a single generation.
- With Chinese pre-orders starting October 10 and retail October 17, Apple enters the market where large-screen phones have the strongest demand history with its first device purpose-built for that preference.
Second-order effects
- The iPhone 6 review called the smaller model better in every way over the 5s; the Plus review now splits Apple's own lineup, putting internal pressure on the iPad mini, which the hands-on already identified as the most exposed product — consistent with the confirmed decline in iPad shipments.
- Android vendors competing on screen size lose their differentiator: the phablet category they defined now has an Apple entrant that reviewers rank first, forcing differentiation back onto software and stylus-style features.
Third-order effects
- If large phones keep outselling their smaller siblings across both ecosystems, 'phablet' stops being a subcategory and becomes the default flagship size — reshaping accessory, app, and component demand around one-handed-use assumptions that no longer hold.
- Apple's tablet problem sharpens structurally: a phone that replaces the small tablet compresses the iPad line toward either productivity-scale devices (the rumored 12.9-inch model) or commodity status, a portfolio decision Apple will have to make within a couple of product cycles.
The trend: Flagship smartphones are converging on the largest screen users will carry daily, collapsing the phablet niche into the mainstream and squeezing small tablets out of the middle of Apple's own lineup.