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3 Categories Where the iPhone 6 Falls Short

6 minute read

Last week, we crowned the iPhone 6 the best smartphone on the market…at least for now. With a mix of strong expert reviews, solid benchmark scores and a host of new features, Apple’s latest handset just nudged its way past the LG G3, HTC One (M8) and Galaxy S5 to claim smartphone supremacy.

But the iPhone’s success comes more from the sum of its parts than from any individual category. The phone doesn’t have the best display. It’s not as light as some competitors. And it certainly doesn’t have the best battery life.

So if you care most about a beautiful screen or a full charge, you can do a lot better than the latest iPhone. We looked at three key categories to see how the iPhone 6 stacks up to its closest competitors stat by stat, feature by feature. Let’s take a look, starting with the iPhone’s biggest weakness.

Battery Life

Battery life has always been tricky to measure objectively, particularly in smartphones. The most popular metric is talk time, but these figures are often fudged by the manufacturers, who can manipulate testing conditions to produce the numbers they want for marketing materials.

And even when you consider third-party reviews—which often feature practical battery comparisons based on day-to-day use—they still rely on the reviewer’s hometown cell towers and personal use habits.

A better metric for a fair comparison is battery capacity. Measured in milliamp hours (mAh), it’s the amount of electric charge the device can deliver—or in consumer terms, it defines how much “juice” there is to go around.

There’s just one problem with this measurement: It doesn’t account for screen size. A smartphone’s screen is a giant power hog: the bigger the screen, the more battery capacity it’ll need to get through the day. This means that a 5.5-inch phablet will die a lot faster than a 4-inch iPhone, even if they have an identical battery capacity.

With this in mind, we’ve plotted screen size against battery capacity to account for differences in smartphone screen size. In the plot below, handsets above the blue line will tend to have worse batteries than average, while phones below the blue line will tend to have better batteries than average.

Predictably, the iPhone 6 sits above the line in the worse battery zone: that 1,810 mAh of capacity simply isn’t enough for its 4.7-inch screen. Despite incremental improvements over the 5s, the iPhone 6 still holds less juice than a glass of Sunny D.

The comparison in the chart isn’t perfect. Specifically, a phone’s pixel density will affect battery life as well, where a more crisp display will drain battery faster. Still, using the above plot, we can see that the DROID MAXX, HTC Butterfly S and several Sony phones—not the iPhone 6—have the industry’s best screen size to battery capacity ratio.

PHOTOS: The Rise of Mobile Phones from 1916 to Today

A German field telephone station in the Aisne department of northern France during World War I.
1916 A German field telephone station in the Aisne department of northern France during World War I.Paul Thompson—FPG/Getty Images
French singer and actor Johnny Hallyday in a scene from the film 'Point de Chute' (aka 'Falling Point').
1970 French singer and actor Johnny Hallyday in a scene from the film 'Point de Chute' (aka 'Falling Point').Keystone/Holton/Getty Images
An early mobile phone during the Iranian Embassy siege at Princes Gate in South Kensington, London.
1980 An early mobile phone during the Iranian Embassy siege at Princes Gate in South Kensington, London.Kypros/Getty Images
Bob Maxwell, general manager of Englewood-based Mobile Telephone of Colorado, places a call on FCC-approved radio frequency while driving to work.
1983 Bob Maxwell, general manager of Englewood-based Mobile Telephone of Colorado, places a call on an FCC-approved radio frequency while driving to work.Lyn Alweis—Denver Post/Getty Images
THE A-TEAM -- "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair" Episode 5. (l-r) Eddie Velez as Frankie Santana, Robert Vaughn as General Hunt Stockwell, George Peppard as John 'Hannibal' Smith.
1986 THE A-TEAM "The Say U.N.C.L.E. Affair" Episode 5. (l-r) Eddie Velez as Frankie Santana, Robert Vaughn as General Hunt Stockwell, George Peppard as John 'Hannibal' Smith.Bill Dow—NBC/Getty Images
Bill Clinton,  Ray Flynn
1992 Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton talks on a cell phone while meeting with Boston Mayor Ray Flynn in a New York hotel on Sept. 25.Mark Lennihan—AP
Whoopi Goldberg during ShoWest in Las Vegas.
1993 Whoopi Goldberg during ShoWest in Las Vegas.Jeff Kravitz—FilmMagic/Getty Images
A farmer with his family sitting on a Bullock Cart and talking on a mobile Phone, in Delhi.
1997 A farmer with his family sitting on a Bullock Cart and talking on a mobile Phone, in Delhi.India Today Group/Getty Images
World Trade Center Terrorist Attack.
2001 A woman watches smoke pour out of the World Trade Center Towers in New York on September 11.Nicholas Goldberg—Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images
A rebel militiaman speaks on his mobile phone after capturing territory from government troops on March 25 2 in Ben Jawat, Libya.
2011 A rebel militiaman speaks on his mobile phone after capturing territory from government troops on March 25 in Ben Jawat, Libya. John Moore—Getty Images
A youth films the aftermath of tear gas police fired at protestors in Muhammed Mahmoud Street near Tahrir Square on November 23 in Cairo.
2011 A youth films the aftermath of tear gas police fired at protestors in Muhammed Mahmoud Street near Tahrir Square on November 23 in Cairo.Peter Macdiarmid—Getty Images
Audience members take pictures of President Barack Obama at Florida Atlantic University on April 10 in Boca Raton, Florida.
2012 Audience members take pictures of President Barack Obama at Florida Atlantic University on April 10 in Boca Raton, Florida. Marc Serota—Getty Images
A teenager takes a selfie in front of Queen Elizabeth II during a walk around St. Georges Market in Belfast.
2014 A teenager takes a selfie in front of Queen Elizabeth II during a walk around St. Georges Market in Belfast. The Queen has apparently voiced her dismay that when she carries out engagements she is greeted by a sea of mobile phones.Peter Macdiarmid—PA Wire/Press Association Images/AP

Display

In 2010, Apple set the new standard for display sharpness with the “Retina” iPhone 4. For its time, 326 pixels per inch (PPI) was one small step for screen sharpness and one giant leap for blood-shot eyes.

Four years later, Apple hasn’t budged. The iPhone 6’s display is no crisper than its 4-year-old predecessor, while Samsung, HTC and LG have jumped ahead, pushing their PPIs into the 400s and 500s. You might argue that the human eye can’t discern anything over 300 PPI anyway, but take one look at the LG G3 and you might just change your mind. Apple apologists have also pointed to battery life—more pixels means faster battery drain—but it’s a tough argument to buy when phones like the HTC One (M8) both looks sharper and runs longer than the iPhone on a single charge.

The chart below lists the sharpest screens in 2014. Note that the iPhone 6 is on the far right, at #33 overall for the year.

To its credit, the iPhone 6 Plus fares a bit better than its smaller brother in both display sharpness and battery life—it’s tied for the 23rd sharpest display in 2014. Regardless, if you want a world-class display, grab an LG G3 or a Galaxy Note 4 instead.

Weight

So even if the iPhone 6 remains a stubborn 326 PPI and blows through battery life, it’s at least the thinnest, lightest device for its size, right? Not quite. At 129 grams, the iPhone 6 is quite light, but it’s only the 9th lightest 2014 phone (in the 4.6- to 5-inch range), trailing handsets like the LG G2 Mini, LG Optimus L90 and Huawei Ascend P7.

For a fair weight comparison of all 2014 phones, however, we’d want to factor in screen size, just like we did with battery life—in other words, ounces of weight per inch of screen real estate. Using this measurement, the iPhone 6 is only the 22nd lightest phone in 2014, at 27 ounces per inch (the BLU Life Play S leads all 2014 phones, at 23 ounces per inch).

And even if you look at only the best-reviewed phones of the year (i.e. the ones you’d really consider buying), the iPhone 6 is heavier, by the inch, than five other handsets, including the Huawei Ascend P7, LG Optimus L90, LG Lucid 3, Sony Xperia T3 and LG’s latest flagship, the G3. The iPhone 6 may be light, but for now, LG’s top devices are lighter.

This article was written for TIME by Ben Taylor of FindTheBest.

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